Using iPod on University Non Priviledged PC

[DarkBlaze]

Hi guys,

I was wondering if you can help me with quite a curious situation that I have come across...

It's not exactly an issue or problem, so I have decided that it could be placed in General, as there are similar threads about it.

Now before you say that this question has already been answered, please understand that I did have a look around for anything that would provide me with an explanation to this, and the closest I came up with is this:

http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61695 where our moderator honeybee1236 responds to the user with a message regarding external hard drive usage, but what I was really interested in was what he had in his signature.

I am using the computer facilities in the University because I do not own a laptop. I wish to use the iPod as a music player but also as an 'external harddrive', being able to store all my files there, instead of on my USB Disk.

There is a slight difficulty though. My iPod is recognised as an iPod in the USB Storage under Device Manager, but I can't view any of my folders in it nor any of my music.

As I have no priviledges on these computers, I cannot install any drivers for my iPod, but I do know it's being recognised for two reasons. One is the fact that it is indeed recognised as an iPod in 'Safely Remove Hardware' as a 'USB Mass Storage Device' at Location 'Location 0 (iPod)' 'This device is working properly'. Second is that in 'My Computer' I can see it there with the name I gave the iPod.

I tried installing winamp, adding the iPod Plugin (ml_ipod) but it doesn't read it as an iPod, so I can't add any files or read or extract.

On another thought, my iPod appears to have 70GB capacity, having 20GBs currently used. Now I am using a 4G 40GB iPod on which I enabled Disk Usage on my PC through iTunes at home before I came to the university's computers. I know that the 20GBs being used is fairly accurate (can't remember exact number) as I put in my iPod all my music I had bought over the years to be able to have all my favourites in one place (that's actually a lie, as I've found myself putting in music that I've grown 'old' of, but still enjoy listening, so I added that too).

Do you have any suggestions that could give me a solution to this? I don't consider myself a computer 'guru' when it comes to PCs, and I must admit I haven't owned an iPod for a very long time, but I know things like this and it strikes me as odd that I can't get to the bottom of this after so much research. Maybe I have missed something.

Thank you for reading this. If you could spare a few minutes to thoroughly read through my message and possibly come up with a suitable solution I would greatly appreciate it. If you wish for any further information to be provided, please let me know and I will gladly offer it, unless of course you ask me for my Credit Card's PIN or anything of the sort ;)

[jhollington]

I assume that the computers on campus are either Windows 2000 or XP? Would you happen to know what service pack level they are at?

The good news is that you shouldn't have any problem connecting your iPod and having it recognized as an external hard drive. I do it all the time on a wide variety of computers, on which I do not always have Administrator rights, and my wife frequently takes hers to work at the University, and can also use it with no difficulty (and she definitely doesn't have Admin rights on her PC).

So, obviously, what you're doing should work, but I suppose we just have to figure out the reason why it isn't working. If I had to guess, I'd suggest that either the systems aren't at the latest support pack (you can usually find out which one is installed by right-clicking on "My Computer" and choosing "Properties"), or the University has installed some other software that is causing a problem or incompatibility.

So when you open the iPod under "My Computer", what do you see? Does it open a blank window? Do you see any files and folders? Do you get an error message?

What drive letter is assigned to your iPod (under "My Computer"). What happens if you open a command prompt window and try to do a DIR on that drive letter?

[DarkBlaze]

Thank you for your swift responce jhollington, maybe we can get to the bottom of this together.

Naturally My Computer and command prompt, etc are 'banned to users with no priviledges', but that never seemed to stop anyone.

Doing a DIR check I came up with the following:


Volume in drive F has no label.
Volume Serial Number is B451-1DFE

Directory of F:\

13/12/2004 18:57 <DIR> .
13/12/2004 18:57 <DIR> ..
13/12/2004 18:59 <DIR> My Documents
0 File(s) 0 bytes
3 Dir(s) 53,220,659,200 bytes free

Indeed, the computers on campus are running either Windows 2000 or XP. The computers in the room I am currently in are using XP.

The computers are updated to Service Pack 1, now I found this out through a bit of searching in Windows system files as right clicking on My Computer does not give you the ability to check its properties, and you can't access it any other way, but I can say surely that Service Pack 1 is installed and not upgraded to 2.

When I open the iPod under "My Computer" I see iPod (F:) and when I open it up at the beginning I would see nothing as if it were an empty folder (given the fact that I can see hidden files, system files/folders). Now after disconnecting it and re-connecting it, I see the same, only now it's allocated to be the 'My Documents' folder that is assigned to my account. So I am seeing My Documents \ My Pictures within it, and My Music.

No Error Messages.

[DarkBlaze]

While I was waiting for your responce, I noticed that a few people were starting to leave from the room, so I stopped using my computer and went over to try those other ones. Before I made this thread initially I had tried two other PCs with the same results.

Now I have managed to gain access to my iPod with no problems and the space appears to be fairly accurate. It does no longer show 70GBs.

Plus, the 'My Documents' driver is F: as it should have been initially and the iPod is allocated to drive E:

However, I cannot now connect my USB Stick to the PC, but it's not an issue I care to really dwell on as I can easily just put everything on the iPod now and use that instead or swap between the two.

I just have to figure out a way now to use a program for the iPod that recognises it. So far all we can say surely is that from just recognising the iPod we have gone to also being able to access its folders.

However there is still that issue of the iPod not being access by the other computers. I know for a fact that all these computers are formatted regularly and 'shell cloned' to be identical to each other, which strikes me as odd why that problem occured.

Any thoughts?

[jhollington]

Okay, it sounds like what's happening here is that the iPod is being assigned a drive letter that conflicts with an existing network drive mapping. Is your campus using a Novell network by any chance?

I've seen this behaviour before, and in fact I can reproduce it on my own home network.

Windows XP allocates available drive letters to removable storage devices in sequence, and it isn't always aware of where the network drive letters are mapped. In addition, these drive letter assignments are stored in the registry so that each time you connect the same device, it gets the same drive letter. As a result, it tries not to reuse existing drive letters for different devices.

So what's happening in this case is that it's very likely that the computers on which your iPod aren't working have previously had some form of mass storage device connected (other than your iPod) which was assigned to drive E. When you connect your iPod, it gets the next letter in sequence, which would be F. Unfortunately, this conflicts with a network drive mapping.

Of course, on the computer where you could see your iPod, this same logic explains why your USB memory stick wouldn't work (in this case, the iPod got the E drive assignment, and the memory stick got the F drive assignment).

Normally, if this were a computer that you had sufficient rights on, you could assign a new drive letter using the Disk Management utility (under Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management). With your computer locked down, however, it's unlikely you'll have access to that utility.

The only other possible solution is to disconnect the network drive mapping, preferably before connecting the iPod. Again, you may or may not be able to do this, but you can try. The easiest way would be to go to "My Computer" and right-click on the F: drive and select "Disconnect". If that doesn't work, you can try issues the "NET USE /DELETE F:" command from a command prompt.

However, be aware that since this is where your "My Documents" folder (and therefore your "My Music" folder) lives, this may not be an ideal solution.

[DarkBlaze]

Yes, my university appears to be using a Novell network..



I had too thought of using the device manager, but unfortunately as you estimated, I had no access to it.

Indeed, what you are saying starts to make a lot of sense. Good thinking.

I had already tried the approach of disconnecting the drive that way, with no luck, but I haven't thought of using NET commands, so that will be my approach next time.

For the time being I've found a 'solution', temporary but it allows me to read the iPod as I want it (hard disk and player) although I would prefer a permanent solution the way we have been discussing it.

Don't worry about any data loss, I never keep anything on computers that are not mine, and there is also a login script that unless you disable it when it's logging you in, it deletes all your files.

Thanks for this help, it is starting to look brighter by the minute :)

[jhollington]

Originally posted by DarkBlaze
...and there is also a login script that unless you disable it when it's logging you in, it deletes all your files.
Hmmm... if you can disable the login script from running at login (the option is there on the Novell client login screen, unless they've disabled it), then that may preclude your F: drive from getting mapped, which may be another possible solution to your problem (since the drive mappings are normally setup in the login script).