Help, the dreaded folder icon!

[ProgrammerGeek]

I just got my first ipod and it was a mac. I followed the instructions to flash the bios and format it as a windows ipod and it seemed to hang. After about 1/2 hour I disconnected it and tried several times again. All I get is it boots to the apple icon and then just the folder appears. What do I do. It does cannect and appears to down load the firmware but just sits there and spins and sais do not disconnect. After a hour or more I eject it and just get the folder.

HELP, any sugestions?

[ali]

i got the same problem buddy!!! but mine wont even connect to my computer.. the diagnostic mode tells me "HDD scan FAIL"...

[revmike]

Ok, ProgrammerGeek
Please do not cross post or double post or one of the moderators will surely chide you for that. What kind of firewire card do you have?

as for ali, I think your hard drive is bad and if so you either have to send it in to apple or take it back where you purchased it, hopefully, you bought a warranty.

[ProgrammerGeek]

sorry, I jsut didn't really know where to post it. Anyhow it is a fire wire card that came with the pc, it might be on the motherboard. It is a compaq parsio, bt it does sow the ipod connected. and appeard to down load the bios to it. The othe odd theing is when I look at the drive through my computer it thinks it is 39 gigs. can't write to it but something is odd. I jsut think the formating blew up and I can't figure out how to reformat it.

[euangel]

What version of the BIOS are you trying to put on it?

What version of the iPod did you get?

[ProgrammerGeek]

the newest windows version, I downloaded it from the site.

[euangel]

1.2.6 from the Apple site?

[revmike]

I would try another card. Search this forum and the old one. There is a lot of information on cards that work well with the ipod.

[m.r.m.]

i merged both threads in case anyone is wondering.

[ProgrammerGeek]

I don't see what the firewire card has to do with it. It does connect and shows connected. Am I missing something here?

[Native]

The iPod seems to be extremely picky when it comes to firewire. Just because it connects, doesn't mean it's working properly...

[djbeatbot]

Having similar experience with Win XP, iPod 10GB. Started with weird stuff happening with EphPod -- msgs about being out of disk space when it clearly isn't. Now, iPodWatcher quits on me, I'm getting the folder icon on the iPod screen when I try to boot it, though it seems to connect to my laptop.

I've read about firewire card issues, but in this case, I have a built-in firewire connector (Dell Latitude X200), and the port works fine (have used it with other peripherals).

Very worried. Any ideas? Is my iPod HD dead? Argh. It's only 4 months old!

[djbeatbot]

OK, so I finally got my 'Pod back up and running. For a while Updater wasn't even recognizing, so I couldn't restore. However, managed to force quit ipodwatcher and other pos apps, then launch updater and restore. Then I used Music Match to rebuild the entire 'Pod. Everything was fine for a week.

Added a bunch more songs, and suddenly EphPod is choking again, complaining of not enough space on the 'Pod (which is just not true). Now Music Match is not recognizing the pod again (I figure EphPod corrupted the db?)

I am beginning to suspect problem seems to have something to do with using EphPod and Music Match in conjuntion. But I use MM as my PC-based music management software, and EphPod for transfers. Strange though, did not have this problem prior to updating to 1.2.6

Anyone with any thoughts?

Many thanks.

[djbeatbot]

First, apologies if this has been posted before somewhere else. I have been having problems with my windows iPod for months now (as per previous posts), and other than the advice that this is a problem with my laptop's firewire port (not true), I haven't seen any definitive solutions to the problem.

The context: I have an "old" 10 GB 'Pod, Windows XP (Dell Latitude X200). I use MusicMatch and Ephpod, the latter for synching.

The problem: First, I started getting "out of disk space" errors in both EP and MMJB, although I know for sure that my music collection is only about 5GB. After a while, EP starts to act funky, giving me corrupted database errors when trying to save. First couple of times, using Updater to restore and MMJB to completely rewrite the 'Pod worked. But gradually, I was running into the same problems every few weeks after adding a few dozen songs. Finally, this week, I tried to restore again, and this time I received a "Firmware update failed" error. When I disconnected the 'Pod, I got the dreaded empty folder icon. I tried rebooting, restarting the 'Pod, then using updater again to restore. This time the progress bar went a quarter way across the screen, and then I got a "Disk error" message. Yikes! Windows wouldn't mount the drive at all either. Finally, after about a dozen attempts to restore, the progress bar made its way across the screen successfully. Thinking I was out of the woods, I tried reloading my music collection. Alas, EP gave me an out of disk space message again half way through the synch process.

The solution: I was ready to send the 'Pod back to Apple when a friend suggested totally reformatting the 'Pod on her Mac(!) The theory was this would then force Windows to treat this as a totally unreadable, blank drive. Lo and behold, upon reformatting on the Mac (using OS X updater), then mounting under Win XP and restoring again, everything worked great. Moreover, when I used EP to reload my music, the transfer process was noticeably faster (by a factor of, like, two!) And most importantly, no out of disk space message or corrupted DB.

So there it is. Everything's been peachy ever since. I know this may be ridiculous, but I wonder whether this might be a disk fragmentation issue related to using EphPod, which doesn't rewrite the entire collection (the way MMJB does) when you synch.

Hope this saves someone some frustration. I know this was a major Eureak moment for me.....


DJBB

[ashawley]

djbeatbot:

That has got to be the strangest solution to an iPod problem I've ever read.

The weird thing about it is that they Restore program actually formats the drive, so your theory about disk fragmentation doesn't make sense because that's the first thing the Updater does?

I can't for the life of me fathom why it worked, but all I can say is Wow! That's great.

I hope thing continue well for you. I would have bet anything that it was a firewire issue as 95% of the time that's what Disk Write errors are caused by.....

Adam

[djbeatbot]

I know, seems weird, can't quite work out the logic. However, I'm positive it was not a Firewire issue. First off, I use the Firewire port on the Dell for many different devices, no problems ever. Second, it's just tool coincidental that after restoring on the Mac, after trying to restore about 20 times unsuccessfully on the Dell, everything was fine. All I can think is that it needed a totally clean iPod to even be able to restore under Windows, and this is what restoring on the Mac did.

Anyways, curious if anyone else experiences anything else like this.

And I'm really at a loss to explain the amazing increase in transfer speed after restoring this way. Really dramatic difference.

[ashawley]

I've got it. Your iPod's been possesed. That's the only explanation! :D

Adam

[hhooaa]

Hi,

I also have a Dell Latitude x200 and I?m experiencing the exact same problems that djbeatbot had. Unfortunately I don?t have access to a Mac so I?m not able to reformat my ipod as easily. I?d like to know if you (djbeatbot) have experienced any continued problems w/ your ipod since reformatting it w/ the Mac? If this is the definitive solution to this problem then I will scour my school and see if anyone has a Mac and will ask them to use their laptop to reformat my ipod. Also, if anyone else has experienced this problem have they found any other solutions to it? I seem to have a love/hate relationship with my ipod at the moment?any help would be appreciated!

[Tre]

try resetting and then holding <<, menu, center, and >>: http://www.ipodlounge.com/tips_more.php?id=443_0_11_0_C

this fixed my "READ FAIL" error. when i did the diagnostics hdd scan after the button combo disc scan my ipod showed HDD PASS.