iPod Classic won't sync after 9.2 update

Tks John - was so mad I didn't realise I was in the wrong forum - have reposted to Windows. regards

I am pretty frustrated. Have the newest version of the iPod Classic and a newest generation iMac. Tried to sync the other day and had the freezing problem. Should have checked the forums first I suppose, but I just decided to do a restore and then resync. Big mistake. The restore completed normally, but now when I sync, all of my music appears to be syncing to the iPod correctly, but upon completion, the data type on the iPod is all 'other' and the iPod menu shows 'no songs' 'no albums' 'no artists', etc. My photos and contacts synced fine and are there and navigable on the iPod. My 1st gen iPhone syncs just fine (even newly ripped CDs are syncing to the phone normally). My library functions normally on my iMac. I just can't seem to get the music onto my iPod. Extremely frustrating!!! I wish I wouldn't have done a restore because at least I'd be able to use my iPod to listen to the music that was on it before I attempted my latest sync. Apple needs to get ON THIS!

Brian, I think you should read this whole thread because there are several options for you. If you can't get it to work, you can always go back to your old iTunes library and try it again as iTunes makes a back up for you automatically when you update to a new version of iTunes. It took me a couple three times to get it right and now it's better than it ever was, syncing is faster. There is no bug to fix, it's fixed, you just have to do it correctly.

If you use TimeMachine, you can go back to the previous version of iTunes easily and just use that for a while, then try it again when you feel patient. But no need to erase everything again, a successful sync will just add and not start over once you've got it set up right.

Read all posts on this thread, we've all been there. And the problem is indeed solved.

yeah I've got a full 160GB iPod too and it's not sync with the latest version of Windows (7 Ultimate) either. It HAS to be iTunes 9.2 that is faulty

I think I have a related but slightly different issue. After updating to the new iTunes I haven't been able to sync my 80GB classic properly anymore. Every time I connect it it starts syncing without a problem, but then always somewhere between song 210 - 280 (I'm sure it's some sort of GB-threshold) it grinds to a halt. That is: almost a halt, it now continues to sync with the positively infuriating speed of about 1 song per ten minutes...
If I leave it like that for hours taking the patient approach, iTunes eventually freezes up completely & the incessant beachball of doom spins away. I always have to force a quit.

I've tried reverting to an older version of iTunes, updating the iPod's software, manually limiting the amount of data to sync to 1 mere playlist of 4GB, none of it has worked...
I don't want to erase the whole hard drive as something tells me that's not the problem and then I'll just have an empty non-syncing pod as opposed to one with at least 250-ish songs to listen to. Oh how my standards have been lowered, but I so love my Classic!

Anyone have any ideas? I've seen threads with similar problems but they seem to get no response or have dried up a while ago without any definitive solutions.

Good luck Mandy, but I'm glad you'll not be making the same mistake I made by restoring and then having an empty iPod classic. At least you can still use the music that is on your iPod. Although John's response above to me is kind, it gives me additional perspective to know that you have patiently tried many of the "fixes" and they did not resolve your problem. I am going to just wait until the next rev of iTunes comes out and hope my classic starts working again (and/or take it to the Apple store and see if they can help me). I was a PC owner for my whole life and just bought my first Mac, so I'm not savvy yet in dealing with Mac problems. Part of why I paid the extra money for a Mac (besides the superior design aesthetics) is because I thought I'd avoid needing to wait until I felt patient to spend hours in in front of my machine tweaking things that worked perfectly well until a software update messed them up. That is what life with Windoze is like.....I guess I was naive to think Macs don't have the same issues. sigh. My Mac AND my classic are both less than 8 months old....no problems until the 9.2 release. It is obvious that something went awry related to that release.

Mandy, this is for sure not what other people on this thread experienced, your problem has to be something else. If you can't find another thread, make one yourself and keep adding threads until you find someone with the same problem. I have a funny feeling that other people are not which is why you're not getting the responses, usually these forums are very active and responses come in quickly.

I know that in my case, with my 160GB (which is so full that I am surprised it even works, I think it's got 159.5 GB on there and usually when you fill HDs up that far they don't work very well and I sync it twice a day sometimes as I move movies around on it). Since the update, the syncing is faster, better and more accurate than before the update. In the past I have had weird glitches where, say, a Podcast just would not go away no matter what I did.

So I do not think that it is the 9.2 update that is causing your problem.

At this point too, if you have not tried it, then do a complete reset of the software on the iPod. If you're only getting a few songs on there anyway (200 songs is not much!) then you have nothing to lose by trying it.

The only other thing I can suggest is that you try and take it into an Apple store to the "Genius Bar" and see if they can duplicate it. Or, if you have a friend with an iMac, take it to their house and see if you can sync their library. If you have restored to the previous version of iTunes by using the old library and older version of iTunes and it still doesn't sync, then to me it's logical that it's the iPod and not iTunes. Right?



Good luck!

Hi Brian, unfortunately, computers are computers and none of them are perfect. We all wish they were. What I was doing for a while was avoiding new software updates on key things until I was sure there were no issues, then and only then do the update. However, the past few years, Apple's updates have been better and this is the first time I had a problem in, say, three years. So I got lazy and over confident with this update. Seems a lot of us did. Then with a Mac as well as Windoze, one needs to waste some time getting to know you're computer better 🙂

Did you go back to the previous version with the backed up library and try that? If you don't know how to do that, it's in this thread somewhere or I can walk you through it. You have to have a back up going so you can get to the old version of iTunes, restoring only the old library wont do anything as as soon as you open up the new iTunes it's going to start converting it automatically, nothing you can do to stop that.

You might want to try turning off auto syncing (though I think Mandy tried that too) and see if that helps.

As I said, I don't think this is the same issue, I think it's your iPod and taking it to the store might be the fastest way to get through it and you might learn a little more about trouble shooting too by watching what they do.

Download Cocktail and run that and see if that helps, sometimes permissions need to be fixed before you do software updates. Usually it's a good idea to do that at least once a week anyway. There are other programs too, but Cocktail works great for me.

Best of luck.

John, thanks for your offer of help (I just may take you up on that some day). You are absolutely correct that I need to get to know my Mac and the Mac world better. When I bought my Mac, I just decided to fly blind and this has been my first bump. I'm happy to report that today I tried disabling auto-sync in iTunes before connecting my iPod. I then de-selected 'entire library' from the music tab and manually selected all of my artists, genres and playlists. After clicking 'apply' the sync started and voila my iPod now appears to be fully functional (phew). I have a pretty large library (130GB) so I'm very relieved to have it all back on my iPod now. I do make time machine backups intermittently so if I get into trouble going forward I always have that to fall back on. Anyway, thanks for being kind in your response to my first rant....I really was in a place of severe frustration when I wrote that and I really did think Macs were, by their nature, less prone to weirdness than PCs. I won't operate under that misconception going forward....as you say, computers are computers and non of them are perfect (Apple's hardware products and software graphics sure are sexier than PC/Windoze, though to be certain 🙂

Thanks again. I've very happy to be out of the woods for the time being.

-Brian

Great, happy that it worked out and you're listening to music again. That's the whole point, of course, is to listen to music, not spend 60 hours trying to figure some little stupid thing out. Overall the Mac is pretty good at delivering that experience. I find the community pretty good. I also post in anger sometimes, but sometimes it's better to take a breath and explain, as there is always someone out there who is listening.

Enjoy!

Thanks or your input John! It does seem to make sense that it would be the iPod and not iTunes, except for the fact that it was syncing fine the day before new iTunes & stalled after the new iTunes. I still think that's a bit fishy. On the other hand, I can actually hear the iPod physically straining when it comes to that mystical song 200 something, it clicks and moans a bit. I guess that sounds more like a hardware issue.
I left the syncing process on again over night yesterday and after hours of slow syncing it finally gave me the following error messages (sorry if they're not entirely Mac language, I'm translating them from Dutch):
"Copying to the iPod failed. The disk can't be read from or to."
"iTunes can't copy track X to the iPod because the file can't be read or written."

Any thoughts on that? I can see that I'm heading off topic as Brian also got his to work (happy days! 🙂 so I will definitely try to post a new topic and maybe head to the Apple store sometime soon...

Oh. I just checked my iPod after that last session. It's now officially completely empty 😟
Guess that reset won't do any harm either.

Update: I finally did a full restore as it couldn't hurt any more. After that I got the normal renaming of the iPod and it started syncing like magic, however, after 1700 tracks or so it stalled again, same situation as previously around song 200-something.
Finally I've settled in the middle: I've manually synced 1 playlist of favourites with around 600 carefully selected songs and hallelujah: it synced all of them.
There are no Apple stores with Genius-hero's near where I live, but I guess I'll have to take it somewhere eventually as this is obviously not how I intended to use my iPod...
Thanks for all the help over here!

Mandy, the only thing I can think of, having had some experience with hard drives, is that the HD is bad. You can try the complete restore via iTunes and then try again (take it down to zero, reinstall the software. Not sure if you have not done that, I can't quite tell from your post). It sounds like the hard drive is not writing properly. One of my previous iPods had that problem and it was hardware, but this is just a guess! As I said, trying another thread would be best and if no one gives you an answer, it means they are not having the same problem and then I think my guess will be closer. If it's still under warranty or if you bought Apple Care then there is that. If not, then 😟 I hope I am wrong! Good luck.

Itunes Recognizes that my ipod classic is connected..but the sync button doesn't work when i click it....tried doing the works on this..download restart bla bla..how do i fixxxxx