iPod iPod detected in Windows, but not in iTunes

[teiresias]

I know this is probably a common request, but I can't find anything through search and nothing I've found through troubleshooting info seems to work.

My mom's iPod can be seen by her Vista laptop as a USB drive, but it will not show up in iTunes. Honestly, I think the iPod itself has issues, since it seems to inexplicably erase all of the music from itself on a whim (or so she says, I'm sure there's some kind of user error involved here). In any case, I can't even load the music back on now because I can't get iTunes to see it. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes with no luck. Most of the stuff I see on Apple's site seems to be for XP and not Vista so I'm not sure how much of it is applicable, but what I've tried hasn't worked.

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm tempted just to say go buy a new iPod.

 

[cuestakid]

When you connect the ipod, what does the ipod screen do ? Does it show that it is connected or do you just see the normal ipod interface. Can you connect it to another computer- Mac or PC ?That would allow you to figure out if the problem is Vista/the laptop or the ipod. Another way to isolate the issue requires the use of a mac. If you have one, connect the ipod to the mac and see what happens; if iTunes detects and mounts it, you can try and formatt it for Mac and attempt to sync. If that works, then there is a problem with the windows installation. As for the music erasing that sounds like the ipod is set to auto sync-which can lead to things getting deleted if music is removed from one or the other.

 

[bex753]

a possible reason , someone has got click happy with msconfig and the ipod service is not running

If the ipod service is not running it screws up the ipod with Itunes

 

[aznkid25]

Assuming that you have an iPod Touch, many people including me have had this problem. Here's how I fixed it:

I downloaded iTunes 8.2 & Quicktime.

I then uninstalled all the Apple applications (iTunes, Quicktime, MobileMe, Bonjiour, Updates, etc.).

I had to delete the files in the iTunes folder (iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, and iTunes Music Library.xml). I don't know if I needed to delete all of them, but I know that the the iTunes Library.itl file is definitely a problem. When I upgraded to 8.2, it updated this file and essentially forced me to delete it and rebuild my music library. This is where my files were located:

C:\Users\USERNAME\Music\iTunes

Also, remember to reboot your PC after all of the uninstalls. I also reset my iPod Touch (not a restore, as the above helped me avoid this, so I did not loose the data on the iPod Touch... though I did have to rebuild the music library.

It was a pain, but certainly worth it to hook up my iPod Touch and have instant connectivity. I don't think I forgot anything, but these are the key things.

One last bit of advice... back up all of your data before you begin, so you can restore the data and music and data.

I hope this helps.