Waaah. Help me.

[brigdh]

For the last few weeks, whenever I plugged my ipod into the computer, I'd get a little pop-up saying 'the new version of iTunes is here! Update your ipod!'

I ignored it for a while, but eventually I got sick of seeing it and had a few minutes free, so I went ahead and downloaded the file. Except now everything has gone to hell. It warped something on my ipod, randomly selecting a couple hundred of the songs and changing their play counts to numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Which bugged me, because I'm obsessed with the play count and like to watch my Top 25 all the time, so I'd been going through and reseting them, or getting as close as I could remember, whenever I had time. And then I noticed that there was something wrong with some of the songs. They look fine, but when I try to play them, things will either freeze, skip the song entirely, or play a little bit of it and then switch to the next song without finishing. And there's no way to tell which songs it'll do this to, because their files look perfectly fine. Also, it seems that although some songs are always corrupted, some will be one day and then will be fine again the next.

And then tonight, as I was trying to fix some of the play counts while I watched TV, I attempted to play one of these songs without realizing it was going to be a problem. Itunes froze and, after waiting a few minutes and getting tired of waiting for it to fix itself, I shut down the program through Windows Task Manager. Now, my computer is not recognizing my ipod. Every time I try to plug it in, I get taken to the 'Setting up your ipod' screen, and I'm terrified if I follow the instructions that I'll wipe all the songs off my ipod (which are still there, at least when it's not connected to the computer). I've tried restarting the computer, I've tried rebooting my ipod; neither helps.

Um. So. What do I do now?

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'd better start this off by saying that I'm not sure I'm going to be any help at all. I don't have an ipod, I don't use Windows, and I don't even use iTunes on my Mac. On the other hand, I do spend a lot of time troubleshooting friends' macs, which makes me overconfident about wading in anyway.

If some songs have seemed corrupted one day and fine the next, it sounds as if the files themselves are probably all right, and there's probably an issue with the new software. If that's what's going on you won't be the only one, and Apple may have posted either a fix for it or a package that will allow you to revert to the older version of iTunes. If they've done the latter the auto-update won't necessarily tell you: you'll have to go looking for it. I'm not sure where to tell you to look. If you were on a Mac, it would be somewhere on the Apple support pages under downloads, and given how aggressively they're pushing iTunes for Windows, it might be roughly in the same place.

If you find any such thing, the first thing to try is downloading and installing that. (If you suspect something like that might exist and can't find your way through the Apple support pages, give me a yell and I'll take a look, although probably not until tomorrow.)

Have you tried connecting the ipod to another computer, to see whether that one will recognize it? Does anyone have a Mac you can try connecting it to, to see whether you have better luck there? And finally, I take it there's no way to run a quick backup of all your music until you've got this worked out?

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

-- and already my ignorance of the ipod and the Windows universe shows. I should have asked a threshold question. It seems logical, as I think about it, that the same iTunes software should run on all ipods, since Apple doesn't know when it sells them which system the buyer will have. But, is this really the case?

And even if it is, do you also have iTunes on your computer, in a Windows version? Is there an update for that, if it's not the same software as on the ipod itself?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, a combination of uninstalling and then reinstalling Itunes, plus System Restore, has managed to make my computer recognize the ipod again, so I'm no longer in danger of losing everything, though the corrupted songs problem from before is still present. But at least it's a problem that will not shatter my world. I need constant music to function.

I can't find anything on the Apple support pages to help, but I was scrolling through the message board, and it seems that I'm most definitely not the only one having problems. However, there doesn't seem to be any solution, other than wiping the ipod's memory entirely and starting over, which is a step I am so not ready to take yet. Hopefully, Apple is working on a solution; the update itself came out less than a month ago, and though I didn't scroll back far enough to find the very first instance of this problem, it can't have been too long ago, so I suppose I can hope that they've only now realized the bugs it carried. And are coming up with something to fix it, dear god please.

But, is this really the case?

Any ipod, in its original state, can be used on either system. When you get it though, and start to set it up to your personal preferences, you have to pick one or the other, and the ipod then formats itself to your choice. After that, you're stuck, unless you're willing to wipe the memory entirely and start again.

The Itunes software runs on your computer itself, rather than the ipod (though it's necessary to transfer songs from the computer to the ipod, to organize the songs, to recharge the ipod, etc), and it comes in both Windows and Mac versions. And that's the update that's causing all these problems. Itunes v6.0, how I hate it.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. That makes sense, and all I can do is back away from the problem, leaving it to people like telophase who clearly know their way around your operating system.

But I bet there's a fix in the works somewhere, if only because the ipod and itunes are such a big part of Apple's business plan these days. Something not entirely dissimilar happened a few months ago with the Mac OS: Quicktime 7 in its first incarnation caused all sorts of issues for people (including killing .avi functionality, which is how I know about it), and it wasn't too long before Apple had a reinstaller up that allowed you to revert to Quicktime 6.5 if you needed to. You needed to guess it would be there and go looking for it, but it worked once you found it.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, that's hopeful news. I can only wait for the solution now, and check the Apple website obsessively.

[childofatlantis.livejournal.com]

http://www.copypod.net/

I used this to get all my songs off my iPod when my harddrive died - I don't know if it'll help you out, but you could at least back things up? (You have to pay but it's not much, only $20 or so.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. That's a really useful link. Thanks!

[katsue_fox]

Blimey, what a mess! I can't help because I haven't used my iPod lately (I mainly used it when I was outdoors in the summer) but shortly before the upgrade, I found that iTunes wouldn't work *at all* on my computer. I'll have to try plugging in my iPod later and see what happens.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ugh, sounds like everyone's having problems, then. It's so annoying when something you've come to depend on stop working.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If you set your computer to show hidden files, you should be able to get your songs off your iPod if necessary.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I managed to convince the computer to recognize the ipod again, but thanks for the tip. I have a feeling it might prove useful, if I don't fine some way to permanently solve the problem.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I found the tip in a book on iPods I read bits of when sitting at the Apple store waiting for a technician to look at my iPod. :D Can't do it on Apples apparently, but for WIndows, set it to recognize hidden files and then look into the iPod like it's a regular drive, and it says you can see the songs and get them. Haven't tried it yet, but I keep intending to.