Xperia 1 III Hangs Windows Explorer (Windows 11)

[Cryasor]

Hi Fellow Community,

Recently purchased the Xperia 1 III - great phone. However, when it's plugged in to a Windows 11 Laptop via the USB-C cable, whilst I can see the XQ-BC52 device in Windows Explorer, accessing any of the internal storage causes Windows Explorer to "hang" and needs to be restarted.

• I can view the 1st level set of files, but clicking on any of the folders renders Windows Explorer useless.
• I have allowed the Laptop to access data when prompted on the phone, and the phone is not being charged from the laptop, and USB is set-up for File Transfer
• This issue occurs both with the SD card and the Internal Storage nodes

I have restarted both phone and laptop and have installed Sony provided USB drivers and the Xperia Companion - neither method seems to allow access to the storage of the phone.

Does anyone have any solution, suggestion to this issue? It's really annoying now and I have tried a vast number of things on the Internet, but to no avail.

Thanks

[Strampke]

If you have another SD card at hand then insert that one into your Xperia device.

Take a few pictures after setting those to be stored on SD. Probably it will work as expected and you can scroll the SD card from your Windows computer.

If so format the original Xperia SD card.

Hope this helps.

[Cryasor]

Thank you for the suggestion. My apologies for not replying sooner.

I have tried another card, and formatted the existing one.

Both cards are fully functional, yet, the same issue applies. 

FTP works, thought hat is a different access method, and I have been using that fo now - limiting still.

Are all USB-C cables the same? I am wondering if that may be the issue,

I can plug in the phone and access the SD card. I see the folder structure, DCIM, Android, Movies etc., yet when I double-click the folder to drill-down, that is when the Windows Explorer hangs.

Everything else I do with Windows Explorer is OK, other devices plug in just fine.

Perhaps a driver issue with the phone???

[Corruptedminds]

I remember having this issue on several (older) mobile phones so I believe it is either due to a driver problem faling to send communication to the PC and eventually hangs or a bad cable.

What may help: Check on the notification bar the USB mode and go through them to confirm your PC doesn't need to install any additional drivers. Restart the PC with the phone plugged in.

Ensure you're using the original USBc cable as some can just be garbage.

If it helps, I have Windows 11 and have accessed my 1 III once, maybe twice and it was fine, although I didn't have an SD card pluged in at the time or moved files so I cannot say more. Are you using a USB-c to USB cable or USB-C both ways?

[Cryasor]

Thnk you for the reply.

For cabling, I have used:

1) The original USB-C to USB-C cable that came with the phone

2) A replacement USB-C to USB-C cable - good quality cable

3) USB-C to USB cable - good quality cable

All to no avail.

The phone connects (it prompts for Deny / Allow Usb File Transfer access and Winows Explorer shows the device (XQ-852) and both the SD and Internal storage.

I can click on any top level folder - e.g. DCIM, and this drills down and shows nothing - it is at this point that Windows Explorer hangs.

As for the Notification bar, there is only the "USB File Transfer Tuned On" message.

When this is selected, I can tap for more options, and the options are displayed.

All looks good (however when I click on "Charge Connected Device" I get a "Couldn't Switch" error and the phone reconnects again, opening another Windows Explorer window - very odd.

The Windows driver in Device Manager shows "MTP USB Device" under the XQ-852 entry in "Prtable Devices".

As suggested, I have tried retsarting both PC and Phone whilst one device is connected to the other.

I have also downloaded the tried the latest "Xperia 1 III" driver from the support site, again, no avail (driver not recognised" during install.

Is it Windows 11 or is it a Sony issue???

Thanks, this is about all the information i can give - I hope someone can resolve

Thanks!

[Corruptedminds]

Try to uninstall it from device manager and restart the PC altough you may have already done this.

How did you find a driver for the 1 III? I had a look and there is no driver other than the companion software. Can you share the link to what you have downloaded please so I can have a quick look.

[Cryasor]

Yes, I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the MTP USB driver and the Sony one a couple of times, in different ways.

As for the driver, use this link: https://developer.sony.com/develop/drivers/ and it's the 4th one down.

(https://developer.sony.com/file/download/xperia-1-iii-driver/)

I even followed these instructions once I had retrieved the driver from the Sony site:

https://xperiausbdriver.com/install-xperia-drivers-manually

I did have a very brief success after this was installed, I managed to drill beyond one level of folder (to the content of the PHOTOGRAPHY_PRO folder in DCIM on the SD card - opened an image and deleted it - all good - then I could not navigate again, Windows Explorer hang.

I need to be very quick after connecting the phone, it sometimes works briefly, then seems to timeout - even whn I'm not quick enough 🤣

[Corruptedminds]

I see. The driver you are referring to is for developers or console mangement (ADB) so that debugging is available and using the comand line utilities. In theory you should not need these if you simply want your phone to work and mounting the storage.

As the page says the phone itself should come with the drivers ready - 'Our devices always comes with drivers pre-installed, but as a developer you sometimes need the drivers specifically.' - So unless you're running a custom firmware or done anything to your phone you shouldn't need these. See if you can get rid of them, reboot the pc and then reboot the phone while connected to USB, so if there is a driver pending to be installed you will see it on your pc screen. Otherwise I don't know.

[Corruptedminds]

So I have installed the ADB driver you used and tried to repair my phone and it worked! You're a legend, I wish I've knew this before as I had my phone on my desk for 5 days waiting on a reply from Sony on how to fix my phone (it was not booting).

I hope you can get your file explorer issue sorted. Let me know how it goes.

[Cryasor]

Thanks! I'm glad you got a result for your issue👍