10.22.09
One week to a new Ubuntu release!
Let’s hope it’s better than Jaunty, which I found to be a bit of a dog.
09.14.06
What to do if iPod not recognized by iTunes
With the recent release of iTunes 7, lots of folks are upgrading and finding that their iPods are no longer recognized. This is actually a common problem, and not isolated to iTunes 7. Sometimes it just happens, even without upgrade. I found my iPod nano was no longer being recognized by iTunes after upgrade, but fortunately, the fix is pretty simple.
First, some details. After upgrading, I plugged in my iPod nano, and heard it detect the hardware. However, it never showed up in iTunes. I opened up My Computer, and found that the drive was being recognized, so Windows was acknowledging its presence. iTunes just no longer was recognizing its existence. I unplugged it and re-plugged it in, but it just wouldn’t pick up.
Apple recommends the five Rs when you’re having troubles: reset your iPod settings, retry on a different port, restart your computer (after updating software), re-install your iTunes software, and restore your iPod (erasing all data on it). Trying each of these steps (one at a time, not all of them) will solve most problems with iPods.
In my case, I first reset my iPod settings by scrolling to Settings->Reset All Settings (on the iPod itself, silly). Once I did this and my iPod rebooted, it was recognized by iTunes. Yay! However, the firmware was out of date, and iTunes requested I update to the latest. (Note: the old iPod updaters appear to no longer work — you now appear to have to use iTunes to do firmware updates.) Unfortunately, the update didn’t work. Here’s a tip: wait until your iPod finishes syncing. Once finished, I did a restore + update, to get it to the newest firmware. Once that was done, my iPod re-picked up, and I had to configure its sync settings anew, and leave it to copy music.