iPhone Remote App – How iMade it work
Posted on 11 July 2009 by Jason Grimme
Very recently, I acquired an iPhone. I have been very pleased with it and am impressed with it’s simple complexity.
After learning about the Remote application to control your iTunes, I went to use it but it would not connect with my computer. I spent several hours researching, applying, and failing… But alas, I succeeded!
It turned out my AVG firewall was preventing iTunes from networking with the iPhone. I will go through the steps I went through to troubleshoot my problem (Which I googled and it doesn’t seem anybody else has had). Try each step in order, and try to connect after each step.
- The first step with computers in general is to restart. Restart both your computer and your iPhone after installing the app
- Make sure your iPhone is on the same network as your computer. It should not be using the 3G network
- In your iTunes preferences (Edit -> Preferences), make sure the following are checked/enabled:
- Sharing: Enable “Share my library over my local network“. You can disable this after you get it working.
- Devices: “Look for iPhone and iPod touch Remotes“.
- Disable Windows firewall
- The communication process uses Apple’s Bonjour service. In Windows Task Manager -> Services, make sure both Bonjour and Apple Mobile Device are running
- If you have a firewall, make sure you have exceptions to allow all traffic from both iTunes (itunes.exe) and Bonjour (mDNSresponder.exe)
- In your firewall profile, enable the System Service ‘Windows RPC Service‘. Allow all.
At this point, I was able to pair my iPhone and iTunes, but once my iPhone went to sleep the connection was lost and could not be obtained until I restarted iTunes. This made the application almost helpful. Why it was happening I didn’t have a clue.
I disabled my AVG firewall completely and found that the pairing now worked consistently. This was unusul, as I allowed all Apple processes to communicate freely … How odd!
I went through every single Defined adapter, Defined Service, Application, and System Service until at last I found the problem (And it was the very last item in the last list).
In Windows XP, RPC is required – but for some reason AVG blocked it by default. It might be a bad idea enabling it but hey, I want my remote to work!
Thanks, had exactly the same problem. Would never have thought to turn RPC on.
Muchas gracias. I had gotten as far as your step 7, and I don’t know if I would have ever gotten that last one on my own.
I did that too and it still didnt work!! whats the exact procedure to get AVG to let it go through? or do you not use the AVG firewall anymore? i cant get it to work and be enabled.