Make my Nano and the internet play nice!

April 18, 2007 3:25 PM

Why does my 2nd gen ipod Nano break the internet?

I brought home a 2 gig Nano a few weeks ago. It seems to hate the internet. Every time I do one of these three things...

1. Manually sync the ipod (when I plug it in and it autosyncs, it's OK)
2. Manually refresh my list of podcasts
3. Unplug the ipod from the USB cable connecting it to the computer after a sync

...my internet connection goes down, and I end up having to powercycle my cable modem and reboot my machine.

I've used itunes without problem for about 3 years now, first with my old, dead 4th gen ipod and now with the Nano. The USB port that I connected the Nano to works fine, I've plugged a few other things in through it and they've all worked without fail.

The Nano itself works flawlessly - it updates when I tell it to, and everything seems to be OK with it. It's only when it is forced to interact with my computer that something goes screwy.

I'm on XP, SP2, single machine (no network/no router), with a fairly recent (2 yrs old) Dell desktop, and I'm completely stumped.

Has anybody else had this problem? Any idea what might be causing it?

posted by pdb to technology (7 comments total)

Try installing the newest USB drivers for your hardware.
posted by orthogonality at 3:38 PM on April 18, 2007

Is your computer connected to the cable modem via USB? If so, I doubly recommend what orthogonality said.
posted by mikeh at 3:55 PM on April 18, 2007

That's really weird. You haven't given us any information about how your machine attaches to your network (USB dongle, wired ethernet, WiFi), what your network looks like, or how the cable modem is likewise wired up. So as a first stab, I'd try using a different USB port for the iPod or possibly putting a powered hub between the iPod and the Dell.

By the way, saying "no network" is wrong. If you are attached to even one other device, you have a network. It might not be an IP network but you have a network of some sort. Technically, you can even have a network with only one physical device but let's not get pedantic.

But, yeah, that shouldn't happen.
posted by chairface at 3:57 PM on April 18, 2007

Is your computer connected to the cable modem via USB?

Yup. I'll give updating the drivers a try when I get home.
posted by pdb at 3:57 PM on April 18, 2007

If your iPod, or your modem, is connected to your computer via USB hub, try connecting it directly instead.

Hubs only occasionally cause problems, but when they do, they're really annoying problems.
posted by Mwongozi at 4:35 PM on April 18, 2007

... check while you're at it for an ethernet port on the cable modem. If that doesn't pan out, I have a Motorola cable modem with ethernet port that I'm not using since we switched to DSL that I'll sell to you cheap, or you can eBay one. Good luck!
posted by ZakDaddy at 4:36 PM on April 18, 2007

Expanding on what ZakDaddy said: if you have the choice, Ethernet is a far more hassle-free way to wire a cable modem to a computer than USB is.
posted by flabdablet at 5:01 PM on April 18, 2007