Hi

My wife's iphone is not recognised by itunes on her Macbook. Get an instant "Unknown error" something like 0EX8000001.

I spent literally 2 hours on phone to apple suport to try to sort this out. We deleted and re-installed itunes, deleted all preferences and re-did, downloaded iphone software and re-installed. Tried different cables, usb ports etc (iphone shows up on usb port when you check under APPLE menu) . None of these worked. Got elevated to a "product specialist" and still no luck.

Now here is the intriguing bit. If I create a new account on the Macbook, the iphone is immediately recognised and works fine. The iphone also works fine when I connect it to my MacBook Pro. When I connect my own (working) iphone to her Macbook I get same error. So I am pretty confident it is do with the settings of the account on the Macbook.

So any ideas how solve this?

My only thought was to create a new account and then port over all the stuff from the account that doesn't work, but a) don't know how to do this and b) worried that I will just port in the bug/conflict as well.

Wife threatening to a) revert to old Nokia, or b) divorce me. I suspect these are not XORs!!

Best bet is to just create a new account, as you said. Simply copy over any documents you might need. Set up the new account from scratch, using the settings you had in the previous account.

thanks, how do I create a new account and export all the account preferences from old account into new account?

boatjames i have a number of things you can try.
Firstly can you try another port on your macbook and also dont use any USB Hubs between the iphone and the laptop.
quit Itunes and open up Activity Monitor then Force Quit Itunes Helper.
Then reopen Itunes and connect your Iphone see if that helps.

A few articles reported that this has worked for others on Mac OSX but people under Windows who got this error message had to reinstall their USB Drivers and that fixed it.
Under Mac OSX reinstalling USB Drivers isnt really that easy, unless you upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 i cant see how they could have gotten corrupted.

If this doesnt work for you, you will have one last option for testing.
Put the Macbook into Firewire target mode, this can be done by holding down the F key on boot.
Shutdown your Macbook Pro.
Now plug between your Macbook and Macbook Pro a Firewire 400 or Firewire 800 cable.
Press power on the Macbook Pro and hold down the Options key till you see a menu, on the boot menu your firewire drive will appear.
Select that drive and press enter.
It will now boot your wife's laptop on your laptop this means now you can test if its a software issue or her USB ports physically.
If it does the same thing on your machine now then a Leopard reinstall will fix it for sure, if it does work then its time to take her macbook into the Apple Service Center but at least you can see i've done the following tests and.

sorry boatjames i see that you got it working on her macbook.
that means its something in her prefs thats causing it.

Create two admin users ADMIN1 and ADMIN2.
If you were to use the account ADMIN1 as your new account you might want to login to ADMIN2 for the copying and replacing of files.
Usually you dont want to operate within the Account your moving to or from as you may get errors replacing data.

Open up Finder once your login to ADMIN2.
Click on Mac HD Select Users go into your Old username.
Select everything except Library somewhere in Library is where her issues are, she will be missing her settings like Mail Account setup ect but its a small price to pay i guess.
Once all those folders are Selected go to Edit then Copy.
Click on your ADMIN1 account or whatever the name of the new account is and select that ADMIN1 user so you can see the Desktop ect in the view.
Then go Edit Paste.
Wait for a while obviously and replace anything that it prompts for.
After thats done you need to select the ADMIN1 User's directory and click on File then Get Info.
Down the bottom under Sharing and Permissions you want to expand that section.
Click on the padlock down the bottom right and authenticate so its unlocked.
Make sure the top line says the ADMIN1 users name and Read/Write.
Click on the Cog Icon and select Apply to Enclosed Items.
This will make sure all the files you just copied are fully accessible by the user.

thanks Maticks, I'll give it a go. Is it too much to ask to preserve things like safari prefs, background piccy etc? Relatively trivial, but believe me they can make all the difference between happy vegemite and me in doghouse!

just couldn't get everything working, took the whole kit into Genius at Sydney Apple Store. Result: the inevitable archive and install. All now works.