I have seen several postings regarding this topic, but mine is somewhat unique and I was hoping someone could help. I have a 5th gen 30 gb video Ipod that was working smoothly until recently. When I plug in my Ipod, the computer recognizes it as a plug in device on the system tray ,and lists it as my E: drive. However, when I plug it in to the computer, this Autoplay window pops up and the flashlight goes searching for some file and I have no idea what it is looking for. It apparently never finds the file it is looking for, because Itunes never recognizes the Ipod. I tried to restore the Ipod, but when I click on the updater, it freezes the updater function as when I scroll the cursor over the Updater window the hourglass always shows up and it never indicates that it has recognized the Ipod. Any ideas? Thanks.
Haven't gotten an answer. What I did was take my Ipod to the Apple Store and they hooked it up to their PC in the back (of course they won't have that out on the floor) and somehow were able to clear everything and reset the Ipod. I was a little worried, because the problem was that my PC, or more specifically Itunes, would not recognize my Ipod. Therefore I thought when I hooked it up to my PC, it would not work. However, both my computer and Itunes recognized the Ipod and it loaded all my music on and all seemed well. However, after disconnecting and attempting to reconnect my Ipod to my PC, I was experiencing the same problems as before...the PC recognizes the Ipod in the system tray, but Itunes never recognizes the Ipod in Itunes so I can't load any music or do anything. Note that not every time that I hook up my Ipod do I get the flashlight looking for the file in the Autoplay, but more often than not it happens. I also cannot run the updater, it freezes my computer when I attempt to hook it up.
Interesting to note though that at this point, I am thinking it is simply my PC, since the MAC store was able to reset everything fine on their PC. However, I gave my Ipod to a friend and told him to hook it up to his computer, since I figured that the only way for me to add new music is to load a bunch of stuff on Itunes, clean my Ipod, and hook it up to my computer. However, my friends PC did the same autoplay with the flashlight deal, so now I am convinced it is an Ipod problem, and not a PC problem. The Apple store told me if I had future problems, I would need to bring both my PC and Ipod for them to look at, but at this point I am just going to try and get a new one under my warranty. This is silly. If anyone else has any ideas, let me know. Peace.
u know its funny kuz i have the same problem and considering how many ppl have this problem it must be quite a large epidemic for our ipods and i find it stupid that apple cant even solve this problem when there are questions like this posted on THEIR web site. seriously if this is such a large problem for so many ppl why arent they trying to fix it for good!?!?! i mean whats the point of having an ipod if u cant put new music on it?? cmon apple thow us a bone here!!!!! >:(
Yup, same thing happened today to me, just when I was all excited about my new iPod... And, it's really weird, because in addition to the flashlight thing, I can't format my iPod when installing the software (you know, when it prompts you to connect your iPod to see if it needs formatting) It just fills to 100% and then again and again until it decides that it does need to format, so I click for it to do it and at about 75% it just says that there's been some kinda error and the PC couldn't communicate with the iPod, so I should disconnect and redo everything, wich eventually gets me nowhere...
sigh I hope I can get this fixed...
Wow...guess I'll throw my 2cents in too! Same thing is happening to me. All was working just fine...but now there are issues recognizing the ipod when plugged in. I'm wondering if there's something screwy going on with some of the software updates that have been downloaded since installing the original software that comes with the ipod. Once the updates started, is when I started having issues.
I've even tried uninstalling all the software from my computer and starting over from scratch...It seems to work for the most part, but then when I update the latest ipod service updater (6-28-2006), it gives me an error message saying that "the service could not be deleted". Then when I try to run it anyway, (whether or not my iPod is plugged in) I receive an "iPod Service Error" message.
I have been having these same problems for a week now. I even took it to the Apple Genius Bar and all they could tell me was that they couldn't even update the newest software on it or get any of their computers to recognize it so I should just buy a new one.
I kept reading on here that sometimes if you drop the Ipod, from waist high, it will fix some of the kinks it's been having. I've never dropped my Ipod, and was scared to do this. But if I was going to have to shell out for a new Ipod anyway (according the Geniuses),I might as well see what would happen if I dropped it.
Honest to God, the minute after I dropped it and plugged it into the USB, the Ipod Updater came up and prompted me to update the software. It was recognized by my the Updater, my pc, and Itunes.
Can anybody justify this phenomenon? Has anybody else had this experience with just dropping the Ipod? I hope it lasts a little bit...
While I have no doubt in my mind that your iPod is working after dropping it, it is most likely only a temporary solution and would only worsen the iPods condition in the long run. I wouldn't recommend dropping it again if it fails to work.
It's like my TV remotes, I'm too lazy to change the battery so I bang it and it works for a little while longer, but I have to end up buying a new remote after a few months.
I recently did the securtiy update and after that the finder sees the ipod fine, just iTunes doesn't any longer. Its on my old B&W mac running 10.3.9 I havnet had a problem before, just it started happened now after the last update. Anyone have any suggestions?
