"iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod. Go to the Summary tab in iPod preferences and click Restore to restore this iPod to factory settings."

For recovering music from iPod, refer to thisUSER Tip by tt2, I hope that iPod Access can work for you, as it mentioned recovery from damaged database.

You should also do theiPod Disk Diagnostics as posted earlier by tt2, it wont fix your problem but helps in troubleshooting.

Good Luck!

You should be able to recover the music using the iLounge Article referenced towards the end of the user tip.

Starts/stops is on the high side but you may get some further use out of the device if you reformat it and restore after extracting all the media.

tt2

If what's happening to you is the same thing that happened not too long ago with me, them when you go to the "about" screen you will see that all the files from audio and video have been erased and that everything is now under "other". Looking into suggestions and fixes other people have tried I got that resorting the iPod was my best chance. But unfortunately that didn't work in my case. What did work was draining the battery and then reconnecting it to iTunes.

I wanted to share this for others who might come across this post with the same problem.

This fix will work for ipods/iphones/etc.

What has happened is an itunes control or preferences file has somehow gotten corrupted on your device. Why Apple hasnt built the option to do this into itunes is beyond me. In effect you may lose your music library on the device but all contacts/notes/apps/etc will be untouched and fine. Apparently Apple thinks wiping the whole thing is a better option?

Anyhoo:

First try to delete one song from your playlist, and turn off/on your device. This will hopefully overwrite the corrupt database file. Try connecting to itunes again and see if that does it.

If the above doesnt work:

1) Download/Install "i-FunBox" which gives you control of the iPhone’s file system from your computer.

2) Open i-FunBox and search for iTunesDB or iTunesCDB. They should show up in a folder, ie; /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes

3) Personally, I had to rename "iTunesCDB" "iTunesContol" and "iTunesPrefs" on my iphone 4 before mine sync'd to itunes again. Its always a better idea just to rename these files incase you need to go back or restore them. If for any reason you cannot rename them, then delete them as a last resort.

DO NOT delete or rename anything other than these 3 files!!!

Keep in mind you WILL LOSE YOUR MUSIC LIBRARY. Everything else will be OK though. (contacts/notes/apps/etc)

4) Open itunes again and reconnect your device. Voila!

Alternately, if youre jailbroken, open ifile and navigate to: /var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes

Cheers!

This worked perfectly for me, thanks a ton!

All I did was open the app (iFunBox) and and "_2" to the end of the three files he suggested. No other work was needed and iTunes works perfectly now!

Thanks, SlimWithATiltedGrin. Renaming those 3 files did the trick. So glad I tried that first before restoring!

You, sir, are a prince. This solved my issue handily. The time to re-sync my library is nothing compared to the heartache and tears that would have occurred otherwise.

Hey Slim,

I don't have the normal path to the files (/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes)

Mine looks like this:

//iTunes_Control/iTunes/iTunesControl

//iTunes_Control/iTunes/iTunesCD

//iTunes_Control/iTunes/iTunesPrefs

I hope this is the same thing. I am running ios 6 on an iPhone 4

How you figured that out is beyond me, but it worked!

*brofist*

This works

Holy crap thank you so much!! This fixed it!!

Man, You're the best !!!
It solved my problem.

I removed the 3 files, but nothing happened, i restarted my iphone 5, still not working, then finally i've changed the 3 files names to "...._2" then connected it to itunes and it has successfully recognized by itunes ...

Thanks man for this effort ...

Where i can find search button? ℹ