iPod/iPhone/iPad not appearing in iTunes

I occasionally experience an issue with my iPod, where after connecting it to my laptop via USB, and having the iPod appear in Windows Explorer, it won't appear as a device in iTunes

iPod showing in Windows Explorer but not iTunes

Follow the steps below to fix the issue;

1. Close iTunes if you already have it running
2. Click on the Start button (bottom left corner of screen) and type services.msc and press Enter
3. A new window will now open showing a list of all windows services. Sort the list by name and locate the Apple Mobile Device Service
4. Right click on this service and select Restart
   
   
5. Once the service has restarted, locate the iPod Service. Right click on this service and select Restart
   
   
6. Open iTunes. Your iPod/iPhone should now appear within iTunes correctly

iTunes Artist Icons/Thumbnails Missing

It appears there is a bug (or new feature) in the latest version of iTunes (12.5) and iOS 10 where a majority of artist icons/thumbnails/images for missing when in the Library > Artists view, as per the screenshots below - they only show a generic microphone icon/thumbnail.





I haven't been able to find a setting/option to fix this at the moment. After doing some research I'm certainly not the first person to notice this "bug".

Only "workaround" for the issue currently is to not use the artist view and instead use the "Albums" or "Songs" view which show album artwork correctly and do not utilize artist images.

Let me know in the comments if you've noticed this bug as well, or if you have found a solution. I'll continue searching and will keep this posted updated with any fixes I find.

Update: I've found an apple discussion thread that states that the artist photo only shows up if you've purchased an album from that artist from the Apple Music store.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7663488?start=0&tstart=0

iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because an invalid response was received from the device

I encountered this issue on my home PC after getting my new iPhone 7. I had previously sync'd the phone with my laptop, but upon connecting it to my PC, I got the error message;

"iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because an invalid response was received from the device"

I was pretty confident the phone wasn't the issue as it had successfully sync'd with another computer - I tried the following steps first which did not fix the issue;

• Different USB/lightning cable
• Different USB port
• Rebooted computer
• Rebooted iPhone
• Ensured iPhone wasn't locked when connecting
• Removed iPhone device from device manager

What ended up fixing the issue in the end was uninstalling and re-installing iTunes on the computer.