July 22, 2005 12:22 AM PDT

iPod Special Report: Updater software issues

by CNET staff

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Dead, empty iPods Some users are left with completely unusable iPods after applying the various iterations of the iPod updater software.

One MacFixIt reader writes "Downloaded and installed the recent iTunes, iPod, Quicktime updates via Software Update. Rebooted, connected the iPod. iTunes recognized that the iPod needed to be updated which it did and appeared to complete successfully. I unplugged and re-plugged the iPod per the instructions. The Apple logo appeared, then a progress bar began progressing. Then, about halfway through the screen went blank.

"I waited a while (a few minutes), then tried a reset ? no joy. I do hear a little 'tick' sound after holding down play/pause for about 5 seconds, but no other sign of life. It is so dead that it isn't even recognized as a device on the firewire bus by System Profiler."

Other users are not even able to complete the update installation process. In most cases, when the updater fails prematurely, a non-functional iPod is the result.

Possible Solutions

Try resetting you iPod Albeit not successful for all users, resetting the iPod can restore functionality and allow the device to been seen in iTunes in some cases.

As described in Knowledge Base article #61705, resetting the iPod or iPod mini is accomplished via the following process:

Connect the iPod to an external power source

Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Set it to Hold, then turn it off again.)

Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears.

Unfortunately, this solution is only temporary for some users. Valentijn Schutyser writes "Since i did the update on the ipod(2ndG 20GB), he shows only shows up in itunes after a reset. Then he syncs normally with isync, and i can play my music on the ipod via itunes, but the moment i eject the ipod in the finder or in itunes, none of my music seems to be on the ipod, he's empty, none of the playlist that showed up in itunes are available on the ipod(display). If i reconnect the ipod, he not recognized anymore! so i can only play my music (and see it) after a reset and then only in iTunes."

Press update "cancel" button if you cannot see your iPod in iTunes Some users are unable to use their iPod in iTunes unless they press the "cancel" button when prompted to apply the updater:

Disconnecting the iSight Once again, the iSight is a culprit in interfering with normal iPod operation. Some users report that temporarily disconnecting the Apple camera allows the update to apply smoothly:

George Vineyard writes "I removed my iSight when I ran into trouble updating my iPod using iPod updater. Problem solved. Prior to removing the iSight from my dual 1.0 GHz MDD with iTunes 4.5 update the 15 GB 3G iPod was not recognized by iTunes and the updater did not respond."

Another solution, noted in Knowledge Base article #61937, can resolve an issue (which is cropping up after the most recent update) where the iPod's disk icon appears in the Finder, but not in the iTunes source list or the iPod updater:

Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).

Type: sudo rm -R /System/Library/Extensions/iPodDriver.kext

Press Return.

Enter the administrator account password when prompted.

Quit Terminal.

Restart

Re-install the latest version of iTunes