iPhone USB tethering not working with iTunes on Windows 11

Hi all, hoping someone can help here because I’ve been at this all day.

I’m trying to get USB tethering working between my iPhone and Windows 11 laptop. I’ve installed iTunes using the correct 64-bit offline installer from Apple (not the Microsoft Store version). iTunes runs fine, and the phone is recognised — but USB tethering doesn’t work.

In Device Manager, the phone appears under “Other devices” as AppleUSBEthernet with a yellow warning. When I try to update the driver manually and point to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers, Windows says no compatible driver is found.

I’ve tried:

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• Fully uninstalling iTunes and reinstalling from Apple’s direct .exe (not Store)
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• Restarting multiple times
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• Reinstalling as admin
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• Trusting the device on connection
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• Manually updating the driver from extracted .inf files (including usbaapl64.inf)
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• Disabling driver signature enforcement temporarily
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Still no luck. It’s as if Apple Mobile Device Support isn’t installing correctly, even though iTunes itself is. This used to work fine on older machines.

Has anyone else run into this recently? Is there a working iTunes build that still includes the tethering driver? Or a standalone Apple Mobile Device Support installer that works on Windows 11?

Any help appreciated — this has burned way too much time.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: iTunes installed but AppleUSBEthernet driver won’t install — USB tethering broken on Windows 11