Freezing on "OK to Disconnect" screen

So are you not functioning again? You have previous posted that you had a solution.

i

I had the same problem. I have done many restarts and restores with actually good result, but as soon as I try to add a smart playlist and disconnect afterwards it freezes. So as a workaround I copy the contents of smart playlists into normal ones and put the normal playlists on the Nano.

I hope they fix this smart playlist bug in iTunes or Firmware soon.

Yeah,

there is a workaround that helps:

Either you can copy your content from a smart playlist to a normal one and sync that one or you can disable "Live updating" and sync the smart playlist.

Anyway it's annoying and Apple should fix it asap!

I am having the same issue to. In addition the Nano freezes often at seemingly random places/funtions...
I am wondering whether the cause really is Smart Playlists. I have done a lot of re-booting etc and can't see a clear connection to the Smart PLs.
In any case, I hope Apple reads this and fixes it FAST!

There is definately a clear connection to Smart Playlist as my iPod works perfectly when not syncing smart playlists...

After more testing I have to agree, there is a connection to Smart Playlists.
I have another issue with messages (under Windows XP) "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive <drive letter>:".
I also have a 2nd Gen Nano with no issues synching the same library at the same computer. So it also must be an issue of the new Nano.

Have done even more testing. Somehow not all Smart Playlists seem to cause problems. I am now synchronizing a couple without issues. But others do cause issues, not only the freezing on OK to Disconnect issues, but also the iPod will react slow to Click-Wheel Commands and crash frequently. Maybe the root cause are Smart Playlist which reference other playlist in their rules?
Another odd behavior I noticed is that some (Smart) Playlists will get synchronized even though I deselected them in the Music tab in iTunes.
I still hope for the next update of the firmware to come out soon. Ohterwise I will have to return the device.

Message was edited by: Klettermeister

So are you saying that in what you have done if a playlist references another playlist, this reliably causes what you are seeing?

i

I am not sure about it, that's would could be the main cause. I would have to do more testing to verify, but I've already spent to much time with this...

Hi folks,

I'm also having this same problem, and have replicated this issue on my brand new Gen5 Nano (using iTunes 9.0.1 and Gen5 firmware 1.0.1).

Having spent the better part of 12 solid hours on this 😟 I confirm that:

1) This manifests with the iPod synchronising properly, but then when coming to disconnect, it gets stuck on the "OK to Disconnect" screen.

2) When the iPod is forcibly removed, the OK to Disconnect screen remains, and the iPod is unusable until a Reset and Restore is performed (Reset with Menu+Select; Disk Mode with Select+Play; Restore with iTunes).

3) This only seems to appear when when synchronising Smart Playlists that have Live Updating enabled. Any normal playlists, or Smart Playlists without Live Updating are fine. Additionally, manually managing music works fine.

4) I've also seen this coupled/exacerbated with an intermittent/unpredictable Windows dialog that says "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert disk into drive X (where X is the drive letter of the iPod)". Cancel/Retry/Ignore. This appears to be quite a widespread occurrence ( http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nodisk+in+drive+erroripod).

When this disk issue happens to me, Cancel is the only option that doesn't crash both iTunes and the iPod. For me, Disk Mode exacerbates this problem: if it's enabled, this error will cause both iTunes and the iPod to become totally unresponsive (requiring Reset/Restore as in 2) to restore functionality).

5) So the workarounds that I've pegged down are not to use Disk Mode or Smart Playlists that have Live Updating.

6) It looks like the Smart Playlists issue is something that this wide-ranging with other iPod models - the Touch and iPhone also appear to be experiencing problems in these areas (see their respective boards on Discussions).

This is not the first time we've had problems with Smart Playlists. I've discussed this previously with Apple: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1514307#1514307 and this appears to be an iPod firmware not hardware issue (as a few of you have reported here, replacement iPods behave identically). This is also not the first time we've seen problems with iPod firmware ( http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=613087#613087). I've worked with Apple Level 2 Support on these two legacy issues - and am going to see if I can get in touch with the same Level 2 folks again, to see if I can get this flagged for attention.

Any further opinions/examples/discoveries would be useful. One of the biggest problems it seems is that the latest (Gen5) iPod software does not recover once it crashes and is reset. Resetting causes the iPod to become frozen on the Apple logo - necessitating Disk Mode and a Full Restore to bring functionality back. When previous iPods crashed, a reset would bring them back to the main menu. And my Gen4 Pod works fine with iTunes, and doesn't experience any of the above, so it appears to be specific to the latest Pods/firmwares with iTunes 9.0.1.

Cheers,
Gopha.

Just to add - it also appears that Smart Playlists do not update automatically onboard the iPod. They used to (on my Gen4), but the new Nano with the latest firmware does not, even though I have Smart Playlists with Live Updating onboard the Pod.

This is effectively a direct replication of the problem that we'd previously discussed with Apple:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=179445

Gopha, the problem with smartlists you describe are very exactly what I found out in a long and annoying process!

Although I can live for now with the workaround (disabling live update before synchronizing) I ask myself if Apple knows about this problem and if they will fix it.

It must be very frustrating for customers whose iPod just don't work, and even replacing doesn't help them, as long as they try to use certain smartlists.

After some testing, I conclude that the bulk of the issues are fixed for me now with iTunes 9.0.2.25 and Nano firmware 1.0.2: No freezing on OK to Disconnect anymore, no Nano crashes, no issues with sluggish browsing through playlist etc., etc.

I believe that iTunes 9.0.2 fixes it because after the upgrade to Nano firmware 1.0.2 I still had the issues. But maybe it is the combination of the two that does the trick.

The only issue I continue to have is the intermittent/unpredictable Windows dialog that says "There is no disk in the drive. Please insert disk into drive X (where X is the drive letter of the iPod)". Cancel/Retry/Ignore.
If somebody knows how to fix that, please let us know...

Message was edited by: Klettermeister