ElectricPhase
03-25-2005, 11:00 AM
Since this is my first post, I want to say thanks to the owners of this site. This place rocks!
Yesterday, I got my 40GB Photo hooked up and working. I've been a computer programmer for 11 years, so this should have been a breeze. It wasn't.
I'd like to describe my experience so that anyone else who runs into these issues doesn't have to struggle quite as much.
1) Although I read the reference to a "high powered" USB port in Apples manual, it didn't register. I have USB ports on both the front and back of my machine. All of them are powered. Apparently there is a difference in the level of power between the back ones which are directly mounted to the motherboard and the front ones which are connected to jumpers with wires. The iPod is the first device I've encountered which doesn't receive sufficient power from the front USB ports.
2) With the software on the CD supplied with the iPod, the setup program hangs when you select "Format". I solved this by ending the setup program and installing current versions of Updater and iTunes from Apple's web site. Those worked.
3) The Nero InCD tray application, which is bundled with many current CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives, interferes with the connection to the iPod. I had to take it out of my startup.
4) The iPod drivers ignore mapped network drives when assigning a drive letter. Let's say you have C: as your boot drive, D: as your CD-ROM, and E: mapped as a network share to another computer. When you first plug the iPod in, it is assigned to E:. What this means in practical terms is that iTunes doesn't see it, Updater doesn't see it, and it doesn't show up in Explorer. You have to go into the Disk Administrator and change the drive letter manually. I don't know whether this is an Apple or Microsoft bug, but if I had to guess, I'd say that Apple is using the wrong API call.
A process which should have taken five minutes ended up taking most of the evening. I'm happy that it's working now, but jeez! Apple needs to clearly document issues with their Windows install process. If I wouldn't be a computer geek--and very persistant--I would have just given up and returned the iPod.
Yesterday, I got my 40GB Photo hooked up and working. I've been a computer programmer for 11 years, so this should have been a breeze. It wasn't.
I'd like to describe my experience so that anyone else who runs into these issues doesn't have to struggle quite as much.
1) Although I read the reference to a "high powered" USB port in Apples manual, it didn't register. I have USB ports on both the front and back of my machine. All of them are powered. Apparently there is a difference in the level of power between the back ones which are directly mounted to the motherboard and the front ones which are connected to jumpers with wires. The iPod is the first device I've encountered which doesn't receive sufficient power from the front USB ports.
2) With the software on the CD supplied with the iPod, the setup program hangs when you select "Format". I solved this by ending the setup program and installing current versions of Updater and iTunes from Apple's web site. Those worked.
3) The Nero InCD tray application, which is bundled with many current CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives, interferes with the connection to the iPod. I had to take it out of my startup.
4) The iPod drivers ignore mapped network drives when assigning a drive letter. Let's say you have C: as your boot drive, D: as your CD-ROM, and E: mapped as a network share to another computer. When you first plug the iPod in, it is assigned to E:. What this means in practical terms is that iTunes doesn't see it, Updater doesn't see it, and it doesn't show up in Explorer. You have to go into the Disk Administrator and change the drive letter manually. I don't know whether this is an Apple or Microsoft bug, but if I had to guess, I'd say that Apple is using the wrong API call.
A process which should have taken five minutes ended up taking most of the evening. I'm happy that it's working now, but jeez! Apple needs to clearly document issues with their Windows install process. If I wouldn't be a computer geek--and very persistant--I would have just given up and returned the iPod.