topic [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac in Other/General

[SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

bpresles — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:26:37 GMT

When you put a lot of data on your Xperia S (I've for example about 24Go used on my internal memory), PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac will fail to detect the phone because they will time out before the phone is ready.

The culprit is the MtpApp process on the phone which takes time to get the phone ready soon enough when there is a lot of data on the internal memory, and PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac don't seem to be patient enough

The solution:

On PC with PC Companion:

Open a process monitoring app on the phone (like OSMonitor (see Google Play))
Connect the phone to the PC
Monitor the MtpApp process and wait for it to finish (i.e: stop using CPU time on the phone and disappearing from the top of the processes list on OSMonitor). Don't worry about the PC Companion error message about failing to detect the phone, just close it by clicking the OK button and wait for the MtpApp process on the phone to finish.
Once the MtpApp process finished, go in Start -> Control panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Device Manager
On Device Manager you should see the Xperia S or a device named "MTP USB" (or something like this) with a yellow exclamation mark. Right click on it and select "deactivate", wait for it to be deactivated (should display a bottom arrow on the icon), and right click again and select "activate"
That's it your phone should be detected.

On Mac with Sony Bridge for Mac

The following should only be done the first time:

Open Sony Bridge for Mac and go in Preferences
Deselect the option to start Sony Bridge for Mac when a phone is connected

This avoid Sony Bridge for Mac to start automaticlally and so too early before the phone is ready.

Once this done you just have to:

Open a process monitoring app on the phone (like OSMonitor (see Google Play))
Connect the phone to the PC
Monitor the MtpApp process and wait for it to finish (i.e: stop using CPU time on the phone and disappearing from the top of the processes list on OSMonitor)
Once the MtpApp process finished, open Sony Bridge for Mac and wait for it to detect the phone (it can take some time)

If the phone is detected as "Sony Ericsson Sony Ericsson Xperia™ NX" instead of "Sony Xperia™ S":

Go in your home directory (Users -> ) on the Finder, then go in the Library folder (on Lion, press and maintain the Alt key and go in the "Go" menu of the Finder and select "Library")
Once in Library, go in "Application Support" folder and delete the folder named "Sony Ericsson Bridge for Mac".
Then go back in Library and go in the Preferences folder
Delete the com.sonyericsson.Sony-Ericsson-Bridge-for-Mac.plist and com.sonyericsson.Sony-Ericsson-Bridge-for-Mac.plist.lockfile files. Then restart Sony Bridge for Mac, the phone should then be correctly detected as Sony Xperia S.

Hope this helps.

Message to Sony: You should really fix that connection issues, it's clearly not normal to have to do all what I described here to get the phone correctly detected by the PC or Mac.

Re: How to get your loaded Xperia S detected by PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Uliwooly — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:32:44 GMT

How about mounting the Xperia S to an iMac w/o sony bridge?

on leopard, snow leopard and lion

Re: How to get your loaded Xperia S detected by PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

bpresles — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:35:00 GMT

Mac OS X doesn't have support of MTP by default, so it won't mount automatically by default. But you can mount it using a software like SyncMate (http://mac.eltima.com/fr/sync-mac.html).

Also the bug I explain here also occurs on PC without PC Companion, because it's the MTP driver that time out, so even without PC Companion on PC you have to wait for MtpApp to finish and go to Device Manager to deactivate/active the Xperia S/MTP USB driver.

Also Sony Bridge for Mac and PC Companion (or Software Update Service) are required for software update and both are affected by this issue (time out before the phone is ready). So with or without PC Companion or Sony Bridge you'll have to do the trick I explain here to get access to your phone (except for SyncMate on Mac which seems to work fine even if you don't wait, it's because it uses its own software on the phone to communicate with it (i.e: you should also install the SyncMate app on the phone) and doesn't rely on MtpApp process).

Re: How to get your loaded Xperia S detected by PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Uliwooly — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:37:05 GMT

Excellent!!! thanx for the info

Re: How to get your loaded Xperia S detected by PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Sam — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:45:06 GMT

Nice, thank you for this. I am sure many users will find this guide very helpful.

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Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

bpresles — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:39:28 GMT

As some users still have issues, I'm updating the thread so it gets more visible

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:40:28 GMT

If anyone has updated their Xperia S to ICS, which now has native MTP support, I can suggest downloading the Android File Transfer app (http://www.android.com/filetransfer/) which almost instantly detects the internal storage and lets you transfer files.

Clearly the Sony Bridge for Mac is badly broken (it doesn't usually find the phone for many, many times - and can take ages) but Sony has said V3 is coming. When I do not know.

I'll try the fix above (thanks!) but think I can cope with the 'official' Android app for now as it's only really file transferring I need to do via the Mac most of the time - to transfer or backup files.

I also wholeheartedly recommend AirDroid (downloaded to the phone) as another way of managing files.

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Uliwooly — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 22:51:06 GMT

which file transfer app?

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=file+transfer+&c=apps

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:36:13 GMT

this is much simple

http://www.theberrycracks.co.in/2012/07/sony-pc-companion-problem-solved.html

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

bpresles — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 08:04:22 GMT

Of course formatting the internal memory does solve the problems, but it's not much a solution, as you'll have to backup, format internal memory, restore data afterward, which is eating much time and can be avoided with the solution I describe here.

Also since ICS update the Xperia S use the Android native implementation of MTP and the problem that showed on Gingerbread should not appear with ICS for PC Companion, the phone should be detected just fine even if the internal memory is almost full.

On Mac, the problem is totally different, since ICS update Sony Bridge for Mac doesn't detect the phone at all anymore whatever you do, so for now either you use PC Companion through a Windows virtual machine, or you use Android File Transfer app from Google, until Sony Bridge for Mac gets fixed.

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

lineup — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:19:44 GMT

Re: How to get your loaded Xperia S detected by PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:06:44 GMT

Hi Sam,

I think I found the problem with the MTP connection. First I run the antivirus and I found a worm that hide some files director on usb device, of course I delete it. After all I delete all USB device in administrator and delete PC Companion. I put on USB debugging and conect de Xperia S, Install PC Companion and miracle, everything is fine now and can eject safetly the device, but if I don´t use the USB debugging I Can Not eject it safetly.

Please post this solution maybe can help to all users

Best Regards

Marco

Re: [SOLUTION] How to solve your connection problems with PC Companion or Sony Bridge for Mac

sketchnsniff — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 11:34:42 GMT

This is helpfull to some but to any average user… complete gobbledygook unfortunately.

For crying out loud Sony please fix this problem! For the last 6 months I've had this issue at least 50% of the time I try to connect, on two differenct Macs, all software up to date from all sides. Even when it does eventually connect it'll often fail later just sitting idle or when attempting a sync of media.

Come on Sony. Invest in some developers and QA engineers as this it totally unusable!