There are two ways to connect the iPod to your PC – USB and firewire.
Most folks try USB because, in the PC world, it is the most familiar. With the advent of USB 2.0 it’s even fast (USB 1.x is way too slow to use with ‘Pods although some folks have had limited success with it. Definitely Not Recommended). All PCs have USB, and nearly all new PCs have USB 2.0. Most PCs do not have firewire, although a large number of laptops do.
The iPod was designed from the ground up to work with firewire. Apple basically invented firewire, and so the ‘Pod works best with it. USB support was added as an afterthought, and often doesn’t work right. There are many, many, many issues with USB, not the least of which is that it was never designed as a full-time, always on interface (most USB ports time out after a very limited point in time, which either requires a restart or complete reboot of the device). There are also many device conflicts with USB, since it runs into another Microsoft problem where drives that are not connected switch drive letter assignments arbitrarily. Thus if you sometimes connect a digital camera to your PC via USB that camera may be assigned a drive letter that will be reassigned to the ‘Pod – your PC will then get very confused about what is where. This often results in a “cannot mount iPod” type message. You can sometimes fix this by reassigning drive letters using Disk Manager.
The best way to fix all connection issues is to simply buy a firewire card. If you have a desktop PC buying the Adaptec 4300 will nearly always solve all your problems now and forever. It is an Apple tested card (you should never buy anything but an Apple tested card) and is considered the Gold standard of iPod connectivity. Other firewire cards can and do work, but many do not because they use a much cheaper firewire chipset (which is almost always the case with onboard firewire on laptops as well – in that case the recommended firewire PCMCIA card is the Adaptec 1430 Fireconnect card). Do not get a combo card – USB/Firewire cards are often problematic.
If you get a recommended card the odds are extremely high you will then be just fine. If you buy it from a store like Best Buy you can return it for a full refund if it doesn’t work, but it will. Is it fair that Apple says it should work with USB and it doesn’t? No, but life isn’t fair. The real question is whether you want your iPod to work or not. If you do, get the firewire card.
That said, there does appear to be one thing you can try with USB that works for a lot of people. Here are the steps:
Step 1 : plug ipod into wall adaptor.
Step 2 : Turn ipod off. (press and hold the pause/play button for 6 to 7 seconds 'you should see a charging icon or charged'). Then turn it back on (press the pause/play button) **still connected to wall adaptor**
Step 3 : repeat step 2
Step 4 : turn off the ipod totaly by pressing and holding BOTH of the middle circular button and the menu button. **MAKE SURE IT IS CONNECT TO THE WALL ADAPTOR AND THE IPOD IS CURRENTLY OFF (charging or charged motion)**
Step 4 : turn off your computer totally and re boot it. Wait until all of the windows icons are loaded.
Step 5 : unplug the ipod from the power adaptor and plug it into the USB ports (make sure they are 2.0 because I was told 1.1 will not work as well and this problem will keep arising)
Step 6 : Assuming you have Itunes and the latest software (November 15th is the latest) on your ipod you should see "Mass Storage Device" load in the bottom right in your icon tray and Itunes should load right up and your Ipod should now be workable.
(Courtesy of Anthony Srdar)
SP2 also causes connection issues with a lot of folks – most IT professionals are not installing SP2 due to the many things it “breaks” so the recommended procedure is to remove it if you can.
Another problem is if you do not boot from the C: drive – the iPod will then be assigned this drive letter and will then not work properly (to fix reassign the iPod in Disk Manager to a higher letter).
This is Not a Good Idea. The iPod was not designed to act as a backup for your music. Eventually you will lose all your music. It’s not a question of If but a question of When. Your best bet is to buy more hard drive space, as disk drives are dirt cheap right now. For less than $60 you can buy enough disk space to hold 1000 CDs. You should also be backing up your music onto writable media, like DVDR.
However, if you are bound and determined to lose your music (and you don’t mind reripping, or you already have it backed up on DVDR) then change your iPod from automatic sync to manual sync. Then you manage your files on your iPod yourself.
For a PC IPodAgent is the easiest way to do this. It may require the installation of Microsoft’s .NET Framework, which can be downloaded for free from Microsoft (there is a link on the iPodAgent web site)
For the Mac iPodRip is the counterpart.
Because the iPod is, in essence, just a hard drive you can use Windows Explorer to copy the music files as well. There are two problems with this: first, the folder for the music is hidden (so you need to turn on "Show hidden and system files and folders" in Windows explorer).
The second is more troublesome -- because when iTunes transfers the files over to the 'Pod it uses its own numbering system for naming the files, they won't make much sense to you when on your hard drive. This isn't a huge issue with either iTunes or the 'Pod, since the tags inside the files are what really matters (that's where information about the song title, artist, and album are stored). But if you are the sort that likes to know what your files are by looking at them, it could be a bother. iPodAgent apparently tries to get around that by grabbing those tags and renaming the files (I have never used it). So that is one reason it's the easier recommendation. But if you really want to do it yourself, by all means just drag and drop the music from the 'Pod over to your hard drive.
Only Windows XP and Windows 2000 are supported by Apple. While it is possible to use a ‘Pod with ME, it won’t be a good experience, and you will need to buy third party software (as well as a firewire card). If you are bound and determined to go this route your best bet is to visit the iPodlounge forums and seek help.
I have also been notified by Michal Hobot of a page devoted to making the iPod work with Windows '98, so I am passing it along -- all information there is unverified by me so proceed at your own risk: http://www.mhobot.w.pl/ipod
Change your iPod options to “sync selected playlists” and then create playlists of the music you want to sync. This is actually the easiest way to manage the music on your ‘Pod and the only way I recommend syncing.
[This is the answer to the question.]
Do not use the CD. Download the latest version of iTunes and the firmware updater from this site. Install iTunes first, and then install the firmware updater. Run the updater and do not connect your iPod until the updater tells you to do so. Then if your connection is good you'll be good to go.
This nearly always means you must first remove iTunes completely following these instructions
exactly:
Then reinstall and all should be well.
If you want to sync the iPod between two computers you can put it in manual mode (in iTunes go to iPod options and switch to manual) and then drag and drop. This will work but you may get out of sync or otherwise forget what music is where.
The iPod was, as a general rule, only designed to sync music with one computer. The program iPodControl supposedly automates multiple syncs between PCs and might be worth checking out.
Shutdown your computer and disconnect the iPod.
Reboot your computer and run the firmware updater again. Do not plug in the iPod until it asks you to do so and try again.
iTunes has a lot of problems with certain CD drives. You should post your question in the iTunes forum where there are lots of solutions for the various issues.
However, my own recommendation is to not use iTunes for ripping your CDs. CDex is a far superior freeware program that is 10x faster and produces 4x better quality sound (as it uses the LAME codec for MP3s). After you rip you just drag and drop the songs into iTunes and drop them on the word "library" on the left and they will be added. It is all I ever use with iTunes.
You can try changing the drive letter by going to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Manager with the iPod attached and right clicking on your iPod and choosing Reassign. Make it a much higher letter, like I:
Note this can happen when your boot drive is not C:, or when you have a network drive that conflicts with the iPod assignment, or when you have other portable storage devices (like a flash card reader) that are sometimes attached. It's always safe to move the iPod well away from the lower drive letters.
If you have installed Windows XP SP2, and then find that your iPod now won't connect via the Firewire port which work before you installed SP2, then you can try the following (apart from uninstalling SP2).
Replacing the SP2 Firewire driver with the SP1 version:
Extract the file 1394bus.sys from the file sp1.cab which is located in C:\Windows\Driver Cache\i386, assuming C is your Windows drive, using WinZip or other compression programs.
Then start Windows in safe mode (restart your computer and press F8 when Windows boots, you should see the option to start Windows in safe mode) and copy the 1394bus.sys file you just got to C:\Windows\system32\drivers. Restart your computer.
Sometimes you may also need to replace the ohci1394.sys file as well. The procedure is similar.
The Microsoft Windows XP Firewire patch for Windows XP systems prior to SP2 is
here.