Confessions of a G33k

/me shakes her fist at the hardware gods...

OK, so like after a few days of the iPod actually working on a PC running Windows XP, today the hardware decides to rebel and the Windows PC fails to detect the thing.

Of course, being the good hardware geek that I am, I check the physical connections, everything is plugged in and the iPod is charging and can play music. I switch Firewire ports - no luck. The iPod itself seems fine. I even plugged it into the PowerBook for kicks and the iPod was able to continue charging. Rebooting the PC with the iPod on and connected did nothing.

At this point, I know this should be a driver issue. I tried "updating" the iPod software via Start>Programs>iPod>System Software 2.1>Updater. No go. Get the "Error writing to the temporary location" error message. Uninstall the iPod software and then reinstall via the iPod software CD. Follow through the menuboxes until the "Format iPod Window" appears. Click cancel. Search Google for "ipod windows does not detect" See that other Windows users have had the same problem, but can't find a solution. Try resetting the iPod via the Hold button, still no go.

Rereading the Apple support site, I find this Your Windows PC doesn't recognize iPod page which tantalizingly suggests that I should be looking for something called iPod Watcher in the Windows XP System Tray. I don't have it. Now I need to go looking for it.

Update: After much reinstalling, rebooting, system restoring, etc. several hours later the iPod is detected by the system. I think that there is an issue with the firewire card, perhaps bad IRQ settings. Just a guess.

Update 2 4/26/04: The iPod still does not connect to the PC. My Mom had gotten it to intermittently be recognized by the PC by playing around in Real Player (of all things) but the PC and iPod still never communicated properly. After stumbling upon this discussion about iPod for Windows on the Apple support site, I'm frustrated to say the least. Apparently, my Mother is part of a subset of Windows using iPod owner whose iPods mysteriously fail to connect to the PC. Who knew?

Basically, the two suggestions on the iPod Windows forums are to get a tested Belkin firewire card and see if that works and to uninstall all other media player programs on the PC. I've already uninstalled all of the other media player programs yesterday, and still no go. Today, I'm going to run out and get that Belkin card I saw at Best Buy the other day (silly me, I thought that a generic card with a Via chipset would be fine). Heck, I plugged in my iSight to the firewire card and *that* was recognized. If the new card doesn't work, I'm going to back up the data on the PC and reinstall XP. At this point, I don't understand what else would work.

Also, I'm a bit miffed at Apple for not openly admitting that perhaps the iPod software works better on a clean Windows install.

Update 3: I got the recommended Belkin firewire card, installed the firewire card and tried the iPod. It did not work. So, last, but not least, I tried the iPod on my daughter's computer with the generic firewire card and it did not work. Thusly, the iPod is being returned to the store since three computers (two running Windows XP and another running Mac OS X) could not recognize it.

Update 4: New iPod is working fine on my Mother's computer.