What can go wrong with an iPod?
08/02/10 09:00
Hard to believe we’ve been ripping CDs for seven years and along the way helping people with iPod and iTunes problems. Over the years iPods have gone from being ground breaking technology to one of those staple devices hardly any of us can live without. Surely the whole iPod thing now works without fault?
You’d think so. Good proven technology so I was surprised when a client rang and said he couldn’t get his iPod or Apple TV to sync. He had tried everything but nothing would overcome the problem. So I went over to see him on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, all the right bits seemed in place but nothing. I opened and then closed iTunes, planning to download the latest version, when the issue became clear - a neat column of greyed out exclamation marks down the left side of the iTunes window. Nothing could be played in iTunes, no digital music files could be found. I loaded a few test tracks and the PC was fine, for some reason iTunes had “lost” all its music.
The next few minutes was spent in My Computer playing hunt the music - all to no avail. So I pulled the PC out from under the built-in desk and found the LaCie hard drive the music should have been living on. It was stone cold, no sign of life, Toggled the on/off switch, nothing. Fiddled with the mains switch, current there, looked at the LaCie cable only to find that the two-pin connector from the mains into the transformer had melted. I suppose he was lucky not to have caused a fire. I’ve taken the old drive away and now face the fiddly task of stripping out the drive, sticking it in one of our PCs and recovering the music from that.
At nothing had really gone wrong in iTunes or on the iPod, all down to a basic hardware failure; and that will be the last call we ever get with an iPod problem. Somehow I doubt it.
You’d think so. Good proven technology so I was surprised when a client rang and said he couldn’t get his iPod or Apple TV to sync. He had tried everything but nothing would overcome the problem. So I went over to see him on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, all the right bits seemed in place but nothing. I opened and then closed iTunes, planning to download the latest version, when the issue became clear - a neat column of greyed out exclamation marks down the left side of the iTunes window. Nothing could be played in iTunes, no digital music files could be found. I loaded a few test tracks and the PC was fine, for some reason iTunes had “lost” all its music.
The next few minutes was spent in My Computer playing hunt the music - all to no avail. So I pulled the PC out from under the built-in desk and found the LaCie hard drive the music should have been living on. It was stone cold, no sign of life, Toggled the on/off switch, nothing. Fiddled with the mains switch, current there, looked at the LaCie cable only to find that the two-pin connector from the mains into the transformer had melted. I suppose he was lucky not to have caused a fire. I’ve taken the old drive away and now face the fiddly task of stripping out the drive, sticking it in one of our PCs and recovering the music from that.
At nothing had really gone wrong in iTunes or on the iPod, all down to a basic hardware failure; and that will be the last call we ever get with an iPod problem. Somehow I doubt it.
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