This procedure will fix Error -48

The reply from Royb was:

Thanks for the information. Please let me know if you have any further updates.

That's good news in itself; at least they've acknowledged your findings!

All the best,

JC

My personal belief is that duplicates are a symptom of the problem rather
than the cause. I can recreate the error by doing an Erase and Install on my
iBook, connecting my iPod and downloading a single podcast. There are no
duplicates at all.

I agree; I can create the -48 fault by even using the iPod just as a storage device (i.e. with with no music on it at all - not even a sync with an empty iTunes!).

If the iPod has no iPod-software on it, it behaves fine as a 'dumb' storage device. But once the sofware's installed using 'Restore' from iTunes, -48's start happening as soon as ANY data is transferred to it ( - be it iTunes audio OR data files (using the iPod as a storage device)).

Cheers,

JC

I took my iPod to a the London Regent Street Apple Store today and spoke to one of the people at the Genius Bar and I was told that, according to their engineers, the problem is caused by unusual characters (such as é, ü, etc) and web addresses in song information... no fix yet and no expected, but he said Apple were working on it and that replacing iPods has no effect.

That's right Shew. I'm thanking my mate Dave for the language base fix. He's an XML guru!
Like the apple 'genius' mentioned -48 error is character based. The 'unusual character' issue is something we come across every day in our job. We support an Oracle based procurement system. XML has control characters that are in some systems language pack dependent. We have Dutch customers and they make our life ****! It appears the U.S firmware is better equipped to deal with them. The behavior of the pod after a bad sync gives it away. There are Xml control characters that behave like the html
and songs will skip through because the database fields contain the character that are designed to perform functions e.g.: duplicate.
Mac os's international system prefs pane dictate application specific language settings. Who knew it would cause so much trouble!
Switch to U.S for the time being Apple will sort it.

I took my iPod to a the London Regent Street Apple
Store today and spoke to one of the people at the
Genius Bar and I was told that, according to their
engineers, the problem is caused by unusual
characters (such as é, ü, etc) and web addresses in
song information... no fix yet and no expected, but
he said Apple were working on it and that replacing
iPods has no effect.

I'm sorry, but this is the COMPLETELY wrong information.

I've been using said characters since 2003 (my first 3rd gen iPod) and have NEVER had the -48 problem. Since I've updated my iPod to 1.2.1, I get this error EVERY TIME I try to sync the iPod using Update Selected Playlists/Songs. Interestingly enough, my partner's iPod updates fine, with no -48 errors, but his is set to auto-update All Songs/Playlists (we have VERY differing tastes in music!!).

AND interestingly enough, the guy at the Apple store in the Arndale centre in Manchester said that there is no problem at all with the software update, and that he has not been briefed by Apple of any known glitches in the sotware.

Someone somewhere is telling porkies, and it ain't me!!

Apple, please PLEASE look at this problem, it is VERY VERY frustrating, and has made me think twice about buying any other products of Apple's. I always believed that glitchy, unreliable software was the sole preserve of Microsoft and Windows!!



Macbook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Read the thread. You can fix this yourself. Switch to U.S english.

I agree.... please read above, Nigel.

Also for what it's worth, I went to the Bluewater store (in Kent) a few days ago (before this in-depth in investigation by folk such as 'Made of Rain' & 'P Diddy' kicked off), & at that time, the 'Apple Genius' I spoke to specifically about this -48 problem knew nothing either - neither from reading 'Discussions' here, nor from Apple...

IMHO, it's more likely that the guy in your local store isn't informed.

All the best,

JC

Hey everyone,

I have now reproduced this error in our lab. Thanks for your help. Have a good holiday.

Roy

While I'm sure we all hope for a speedy and complete fix, now that you have the repro scenario for it, is there a "safe" and accurate workaround that can be done in the meantime?

There appears to be a dangerous amount of "rubber chicken waving" magic being attempted, but I'm not sure a correct workaround has been promote by anyone yet?

In my situation (two iPods, two Macs, in Australia (which is a dd-mm-yyyy kind of country)), I do NOT get the 48 error with both Macs set to (US) English in System Preferences/International on the first tab, even though the second tab is set to correctly show Australia as the region. Both macs have been set up like this from the start (so I don't know what combination of Restoring, etc on the Mac might get a previously broken one into the same happy state as mine appear to be), and the only side effect - other than the seemingly good one of neither iPod succumbing to error-48) is that laguage-aware websites don't get my preferred Accept-Language setting for En-AU, but rather think I like my dates rendered in US format.

Anyway, if you can offer some prescriptive guidance on what a user affected by Error -48 can do until a fix is provided (again I'm guessing it involves setting English (rather than Australian English or British English) in International, then doing some degree of reformatting/restore on the iPod and/or iTunes), I'm sure that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
ted.h.

Roy

You can have NO IDEA how happy your post makes me! I have just been desperate to hear from Apple that this is a problem that is being investigated (as you know from my emails)

Merry Christmas everyone

Regards

PD

With all due respect, I've been to that same "genius bar" many times with faulty Apple equipment, and geniuses they ain't. I'm still trying to get my old iMac G5 with the switching-off-by-itself issue fixed by them and they just keep telling me that there's no problem at all - even though I had to buy a new Intel iMac just to have a functional computer and the G5 iMac still sits here like a dead paperweight (covered by AppleCare so I will be hassling them for the next two years at least, just to make a point).

Good morning Ted. The Language based work around is detailed above in steps. Just read up in the thread. There is nothing 'dangerous' or erm 'rubber chicken' related about creating a new user profile with U.S english language settings..
You don't even have to erase your existing profile just use the temp until Apple provide a firmware fix.
Its very simple, just put your file directories :Music, Docs Pictures etc into the SHARED folder (under Users) and use .mac sync for the rest.. (bookmarks,keychains,mail,address books etc) Its worked for everyone that has used it and for a relatively small amount of effort on your part you can get your ipod working perfectly in the interim.
Merry Christmas.

While I'm sure we all hope for a speedy and complete
fix, now that you have the repro scenario for it, is
there a "safe" and accurate workaround that can be
done in the meantime?

There appears to be a dangerous amount of "rubber
chicken waving" magic being attempted, but I'm not
sure a correct workaround has been promote by anyone
yet?

Ted

Many of us have had the -48 problem for a long time. I've had it for a month, others for several months. It has been very hard to get much of an official response from Apple, and as his is a user-to-user help forum, many of us have been trying to narrow down what is causing the problem and what might be useful workarounds. I have seen nothing unsafe suggested here, unless I am missing something. I have no idea what "rubber chicken waving" magic is, but it sounds like fun.

Regards

PD

I know email isn't a great expressive medium, but I did say "dangerous amount" not that the suggested workarounds were of themselves dangerous. Apologies if anyone felt I was slighting the thought and effort that has gone into trying to resolve or at least work around the problem these past months.

Anyway, just within this thread it seems to me we have collectively posted at least three seemingly completely-unrelated workarounds to the same underlying problem, viz: (1) make sure there are no duplicates in any playlists, or (2) enable disc mode for the iPod and repair it before each and every Sync with iTunes, or (3) create a user on the Mac with (US) english (rather than a dd-mm-yyyy flavour of English) and use that.

Surely they can't all be addressing, and equally effective for, the same underlying issue causing the error-48? If they are really different problem scenarios causing the same error message, then which of them has Apple reproduced?

ted.h.

hi RoyB.

thats very good news. I bought a brand new 5th gen 30GB today and as soon as i turn on the sync photos i get -48 errors at every update even if i completely empty my iPhoto library first.

i'm using a mac mini (powerpc) with mac os x 10.4.8 and itunes 7.0.2 (iPod update 1.2.1) with everything set to uk region.

i work in software support so i've been trying to troubleshoot this myself for the last 5 hours or so, but if its just down to something dodgy in the firmware with uk settings and its something you can fix i will go to bed a happy man (it is 5am here!) greetings from manchester, england and merry christmas to you!