iPod Need Help with Ipod -

[pm3009]

My son has a 40GB - iPod (dock connector) with v2.3 software. It's on a PC running Windows 2000 Professional. Added a lot of music last night, but there were some songs missing, because they weren't added to the itunes folder. I corrected that. When I hooked his IPOD back up to the computer, it cleared it and went to reinstall everything, but it keeps dying. I tried resetting the Ipod, doing a restore, repairing Itunes, upgrading to itunes 7 and can't seem to fix it. It gives me one of the two following errors. It was working fine until we added a lot of music to it last night. It dies after uploading a small amount of songs. Could be 17 one time, or 30 the next time. I tried doing manually copy music, and also let Itunes do it automatically. The two errors we're getting is:

"The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check
drive E: and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door
is closed." (I tried both USB ports, rebooted computer, reset and did a restore on the ipod, but keep getting this error)

or I get this error...

"Ipod can not be updated - required file can not be found".

I'm wondering if the Itunes library could be corrupt. I did a Itunes 7 repair, but still get the error. Also wondering if maybe the Itunes 7 isn't working well with his older Ipod. I have no problem with it on my laptop with my new 8GB nano / Windows XP.

Any suggestions? I'm going to try removing everything from his Itunes library and importing it all again, and if that doesn't work, uninstall Itunes7 and go back to Itunes 6. I don't think I was getting the "Drive is not ready...." error with Itunes6...just the second error. Now I'm getting mainly the "Drive is not ready error..." Is there something else I should try?


Thanks, Pam

 

[Chundles]

Are you plugging it into a power adapter as well? The 3G iPod requires a USB+Firewire cable if you are tranferring data via USB as it cannot use USB to charge. You need to plug the firewire cable into the power adapter and the USB cable into the computer.

It sounds to me as though the battery is dead and it can't spin up the HDD.

 

[pm3009]

Hi Chundles. Yes, I had the Ipod plugged into the wall outlet the entire time. Had no problems until I tried to load several hundred songs last night. Actually got most of them on, but there were some missing songs. They were not put into the itunes folder. So I fixed that....and that's when the problem started. So, out of 1600 songs, the ipod managed to load 39!

Thanks. Pam

 

[mad jew]

Is the iPod set to be used as an external drive (iPod Preferences)? Also, do you have McAfee installed?

 

[pm3009]

Think the problem is with my pc, not the ipod

Hi Mad Jew. I believe the Ipod is set to external drive, but I'll double check.
I do not have McAfee.

Looks like the problem is with the PC, not the Ipod. I think it was caused by uninstalling itunes7 and re-installing itunes 6. The PC was absolutely fine until that. I noticed that Windows isn't recognizing either one of my cd-roms all of a sudden. I've removed them and let windows re-detect them, but they still have a yellow exclamation point next to them in the Device Manager. I think something in windows is corrupt. I hooked my son's ipod up to my laptop, and had no problem at all. Was able to load a few hundred songs on his ipod very quickly.

I did see that Itunes is saying there isn't any ipod connected, but yet when I plugged in the ipod after re-installing itunes6, Windows did detect it. I thought maybe the USB ports are messed up too....but I plugged in a 256MB USB drive, and was able to copy data off of it.

I think I need to repair or re-install windows, but I need to back up the music before I want to chance doing that. Have an external hardrive being delivered on Wednesday.

Thanks!
Pam

 

[mad jew]

Okay, well you're getting a pretty generic error but I agree that it's probably not an iTunes or iPod problem. Reinstall Windows and see how you go.

 

[pm3009]

Arrrrg!

Ok....I have both CD-Roms working (deleted an entry in the registry). Then ran Norton WinDoctor. Everything on the PC seems to be working fine now. I re-installed Itunes6 and hooked in the IPOD and Windows found it and installed the new hardware. Itunes doesn't recognize the ipod though. I get this error: "The Software required for communicating with ipod is not installed correctly, please reinstall itunes to install the ipods software".

Do you have to install both, Ipodsetup and itunesetup, or just itunessetup? Does it matter which order you install each, and when during the install you plug in the ipod? I do see the ipod in "My Computer" when I first plug it in and it shows the correct disk size, but then Itunes gives me the error. We've had this Ipod for a year and 1/2 and haven't had any problems at all until I installed Itunes7, then removed it and installed Itunes6. I've uninstalled Itunes6 several times and I can't seem to resolve this problem.

Thanks for any help!
Pam

 

[pm3009]

Double Aaarg!!

Well...I finally gave up trying to go back to itunes6, and tried Itunes 7 AGAIN....and Itunes7 recognized the ipod. Itunes6 wouldn't recognize it. It went through the 1500+ songs to determine gapless playback and started downloading songs. Got up to 36 songs, and then stopped with the original error I reported in this thread. ""The drive is not ready for use; its door may be open. Please check drive E: and make sure that a disk is inserted and that the drive door is closed."

So...Itunes6 and Itunes7 are both giving different errors. I'm at a loss of what to try next. Re-install Windows? Last thing I want to have to do is format the drive, re-install everything....just to end up with the same problem.

Thanks. Pam

 

[bericd]

similar problem

I replaceded my 3G 20GB with a 5G recently and gave the 3G to my Dad. He gets home and tries it - but gets the same error as you did. We try a bunch of stuff (re-install everything, rstore the ipod etc) numerous times, but eventually he shipped it back to me.
I had exactly the same luck on my PC, and then moved it over onto my mac. The drive access was very slow, but the disk diagnostic came back as everything OK.

At this point I persuaded my wife to lend me her 3G 20GB, and swapped the hard drives out, finding that the problem was with the hard drive and not the rest of the ipod, but once again, the drive test did not show any problems with the drive.

So I put my wife's ipod back together, placed the 'suspect' ipod in the bits box, and got a refurbished nano for my Dad.

 

[pm3009]

Got Ipod working .... for the most part

Still unable to get songs loaded on my son's 3G ipod from his PC running Windows2000Pro. I tried Restoring it thru Itunes7 on both, his PC, and also on my laptop running XP. I'm unable to Restore it on either PC thru Itunes7. Get the error:
"Ipod can not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1418) "

I found in Apple's forum, that a lot of people are unable to do a Restore thru
Itunes7 and are getting that error.

Uninstalling Itunes7 and re-installing Itunes6 on his PC, is worse. Itunes6 no longer recognizes his Ipod at all. Itunes6 worked fine up until installing Itunes7.

I did find today, that a auto-sync on Itunes7 on my son's PC running Win2000Pro to his Ipod won't work. (it loses connectivity to the Ipod and hangs the PC after loading 30 or so songs). I tried manually loading songs from his PC , and that works fine. Was able to load over 1300 songs to his ipod today.

I guess I can chalk this up to a very buggy Itunes7. Itunes6 on my son's PC running Windows2000Pro worked fine until I upgraded to Itunes7. Had problems with Itunes7 so I uninstalled that and re-insalled Itunes6. Itunes6 never worked again after that point. Uninstalling Itunes7, also disabled both of my CD-Roms, which I fixed by removing a value in the Registry.

Itunes7 on my laptop running XP works fine with both my new 8GB Nano, AND with my son's 3G Ipod. I can even do an auto-sync to my son's ipod from my laptop, but not from his PC. Only difference is I am running XP and his PC has Win2000Pro (SP4).

That was fun!