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Level 1

7 points

"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."

Hi. I am getting the following error message...

"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."

...and my iPod is displaying that there is no music on it.

Sorry to bring up something that's been discussed so many times, but I haven't yet been able to find a fix that works for me.

I'm a mac user and this is an 120gb iPod classic.

When I click Get Info on the device, it shows that the ipod is still full:

I stupidly don't have the contents backed up anywhere or the original MP3s still in my itunes (I know, I'm an idiot right?). I managed the music manually and bascially used my iPod to store all my music.

Is it possible to still access the music on the device in any way?

Do I have any option other than to restore it and delete everything? I really don't want to have to do that, if at all possible.

When I click to see the contents of the iPod, this is what is there...

If I click on that iTunesDB folder on the bottom right then it just displays the same thing again, like it's stuck in a loop.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! Even if it's just a definitive "Your iPod is screwed, you have no option other than to restore it".

Cheers!

iPod classic

Posted on Sep 1, 2012 4:37 AM

Best reply

Bilbo_cheshire

Level 4

1,780 points

Posted on Sep 1, 2012 5:52 AM

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!

View in context

51 replies

Dec 4, 2013 7:11 AM in response to SlimWithATiltedGrin

VERY GOOD!!!

Ive been bothered for how many days wd this problem. I jus renamed the files in iFile. Now, fortunately, i can manage again my music library. I almost decided to restore my jailbroken iphone 5 to stock ios 7.

Thank you so much. God bless..

Jan 30, 2014 5:30 AM in response to Al_English

hi,

i was wondering if this issue with the ipod and itunes has been resolved somewhere. Because when using my other laptops ive noticed that my ipod works just fine but on my main laptop where i've reinstalled the whole bundle of itunes rubbish... i still get this message that my ipod cannot be read and that it wants to restore(erase all my music) on the ipod.

hopefully someone might be able to point me in the right direction here because the whole ifunbox sollution doesnt apply to ipod classics

thanks in advance

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jan 30, 2014 5:55 AM in response to deviate84

Does the iPod show up in Windows Explorer? Can you post the exact error message please?

tt2

Jan 30, 2014 7:57 AM in response to turingtest2

the ipod does show in windows explorer and i can see the contents on it...i get the following error "iTunes cannot read the contents pf the iPod ......Go to the summary tab in iPod preferences and click Restore to restore this iPod to factory settings" the ipod functions fine though when im using it for music or watching videoclips and it is recognised on 3 other laptops/computers...

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jan 30, 2014 8:09 AM in response to deviate84

If you've done the complete tear out and rebuild of iTunes, such as shown in the second box in Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates then I'd suspect an issue with a driver that survives the process. Offhand I don't where you would go to find and repair it but it might appear in the device manager control panel when the device is connected. Removing the current driver then reconnecting the device should force the correct driver into place.

tt2

Jan 30, 2014 9:19 AM in response to turingtest2

well i tried deleting the drivers, but the problems remain...if i knew uninstalling bonjour would lead to this mess... =( now deleting the driver itself and having the laptop look for the driver again results the same error, but apples solution is just riddiculous...i mean erasing thousands of songs isnt a garantee that i will be able to use it again in itunes also why does it then work on other pc's....well no new songs for me then if this continues =(

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Jan 30, 2014 9:29 AM in response to deviate84

No songs should be harmed in the process of removing and reinstalling iTunes. But you really ought to have a backup. A link to a suggested method is given in the user tip.

tt2

Mar 1, 2014 2:26 AM in response to turingtest2

hi turingtest.

I thought you might want to know that I finally found what was bothering itunes. Seems that with erasing bonjour as I did it messed with some regedit settings and it set all usb devices to writeprotect. After i noticed that none of my usb drives were functioning properly I erased those drivers only to find that the issue was somewhere else and after correcting this setting itunes started recognising all ipods on my laptop =D

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies writeprotect was on

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Mar 1, 2014 5:49 AM in response to deviate84

Thanks for the follow up. 🙂

tt2

Jun 4, 2014 8:55 AM in response to Community User

Quite a few users have told us they came across this ‘iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPhone’ problem, didn’t know what to do. If you choose to restore your device, all the data would be erased!!!

Here’s a quick answer we found in Apple communities and we want to share it with all those might have the same problem. Thanks SlimWithATitledGrin for your good suggestion. The original post is a bit long, so here’s our simplified version.

Step 1:

Try deleting a song from your playlist and respring your device. Hopefully, this will overwrite the corrupt file. Then, reconnect to iTunes and see if it works.

Step 2:

If it doesn’t work, let’s try using iFunBox. Open iFunBox, navigate to: /Raw File System/iTunes_Control/iTunes, and rename these 3 files: iTunesCDB, iTunesControl, iTunesPrefs. You can do this by right-clicking on the file and choose ‘Rename’ in the context menu. Then, open iTunes again to reconnect your device. BOOM!

- See more at: http://blog.i-funbox.com/?p=1537#sthash.CtLxxNAG.4I172LvP.dpuf

Step 1:

Try deleting a song from your playlist and respring your device. Hopefully, this will overwrite the corrupt file. Then, reconnect to iTunes and see if it works.

Step 2:

- See more at: http://blog.i-funbox.com/?p=1537#sthash.CtLxxNAG.4I172LvP.dpuf

Step 1:

Try deleting a song from your playlist and respring your device. Hopefully, this will overwrite the corrupt file. Then, reconnect to iTunes and see if it works.

Step 2:

- See more at: http://blog.i-funbox.com/?p=1537#sthash.CtLxxNAG.4I172LvP.dpuf

Dec 11, 2014 6:07 AM in response to SlimWithATiltedGrin

Hello

How can I do that on an iPod classic?

I can't download that on an iPod Classic, obviously. What should I do?

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 11, 2014 6:42 AM in response to dawbakhos

Start here: Corrupt iPod classic.

tt2

Dec 11, 2014 6:52 AM in response to turingtest2

I don't know what happened to my iPod precisely; I was just syncing some music, left the iPod connected to my mac and went to sleep. Then, this morning, when I woke up, my iPod said it has no music, yet, it only has about 1GB free. And if I connect it back to iTunes, it says that the iPod needs to be restored. It's the only place where I have my music. :-/

turingtest2

Level 10

272,795 points

Dec 11, 2014 7:02 AM in response to dawbakhos

dawbakhos wrote:

It's the only place where I have my music. :-/

Well that was a mistake. 😟

Start with the first section in the linked thread. Shows how to recover media from an iPod even if the database on the device is damaged. You'll need enough space on your local drives to extract all of the media. Get a portable external hard drive if you don't have room internally. Get a second if needed so you can backup your data in future.

tt2

Dec 11, 2014 7:07 AM in response to turingtest2

I'm stupid, I know. I was even more stupid after buying a 2TB portable hard drive, because i didn't do it while I could. It has some more than one TB free, so that wouldn't be a problem. Do I still have a chance? :-(

"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."