My iPod doesn't tell iTunes about music I listened to. But only sometimes!
January 6, 2008 7:54 PM Subscribe
I sync my nano with iTunes. I play a few podcasts on my iPod, plug it in to my computer, but iTunes doesn't notice they've been played, and resets all my podcasts. But only sometimes! Infuriating!
I apologize for the length, but I have no idea how much of this backstory is relevant to solving my problem.
Okay, I'll start from the beginning. I had an orginal first generation iPod nano that I loved, syncing with my old computer, and it all worked perfectly. I also had a Griffin PowerJolt USB car charger that I used for my commute. Occasionally, if I left the iPod connected to the PowerJolt all the time, it would "reset" itself and lose all of my played podcasts. To be precise: I would start up my car and suddenly my iPod would be in the exact same state as it was immediately after syncing with iTunes. This was annoying but happened so infrequently it didn't bother me too much.
Many, many months ago I got out of my car, put my iPod in my pocket; a few hours later I took it out and the screen was cracked. I figured I was hosed, and it sat on my shelf for a few months, but a friend told me that some of the early iPod screens were defective and maybe Apple would replace my iPod for free. They did -- they replaced it with an identical model, which is perfect because I don't like gen 2 nanos and hate gen 3 ones.
In the meantime I purchased a new computer. My entire iTunes library was on the E: drive, which I set up on the new computer as the E: drive as well. I copied the itunes .itl and .xml files over, and iTunes found all my music and it seemed to work just fine.
I got my new iPod home, and plugged it in, synced it up, and everything was great. I commuted with my new ipod for the first time in MONTHS and listened to all my favorite podcasts in the car. At the end of the week, I brought it in to the house and plugged it in, and just as I described above, iTunes didn't recognize that I had played any podcasts, and reset my iPod so that it didn't recognize that I had played any podcasts either. I should mention here that it's not just podcasts, this happens with all songs.
I updated iTunes, unplugged my iPod and tested it, and this seemed to fix it. But a few weeks later, it did it again. I reinstalled iTunes, and this seemed to fix it. Then it did it AGAIN. I took the iPod back to Apple. They told me to delete my itl file and rebuild my library. I did. That's when I found out that my album art was all screwed up and rebuilding the library fixed it. Sweet! Rebuilding seemed to fix my podcast problem too... and then... once again it refused to "reverse sync," for lack of a better term. I did some more testing and determined that if I reset the iPod before syncing then it never exhibited the reverse syncing problem.
Occasionally it acted funny when ejecting: it would briefly show the regular iPod menu before the computer would make the usb device ejecting sound, followed by the usb device connecting sound, and iTunes would try to sync with it again. At times I would have to reboot to disconnect it.
I took it back to Apple, and they said they would replace it, saying they had never even heard of such a thing before and it was bound to be my iPod that was defective. I took the opportunity of getting another new iPod to test a few theories of my own.
1. Perhaps the PowerJolt developed a short in it or something, so it was randomly sending a jolt of electricity that was zapping something in the nano causing it to forget what songs had been played. I'm not getting the same symptoms as I got last time but it's still possible. So I won't use the PowerJolt with my new iPod.
2. Maybe there was some residual weirdness from copying my library over from one computer to another. I decided to *gulp* nuke my entire library and start from scratch. I uninstalled iTunes and ran the Windows Installer CleanUp utility from Microsoft. I deleted my library files and shuffled the actual music files around so none of them were in the same place. I re-added and rated 15 or 20 albums to get started, and subscribed to a few podcasts.
This was my first week with the new iPod. We had to make an emergency trip to Michigan, so I only ran the iPod off batteries, and it never completely ran out of juice. I came home, synced it, and... lost all my podcasts again.
So. I don't want to take it back to the Apple store, because they'll probably think I'm some crank, plus I don't know what they can do for me. Yes, I can keep resetting the iPod before every sync but since the original problem is intermittent to begin with this may not be a real fix. Should I be worried about the PowerJolt? It doesn't have a user-replacable fuse which worries me.
I tried to google for my iPod problem, but "reverse syncing" doesn't seem to be the name for what is going wrong, and doing a search for iPod syncing returns a zillion irrelevant links. I'm willing to do anything to make this work, up to re-installing Windows XP, which I just did 4 or 5 months ago when I got the new machine.
I apologize for the length, but I have no idea how much of this backstory is relevant to solving my problem.
Okay, I'll start from the beginning. I had an orginal first generation iPod nano that I loved, syncing with my old computer, and it all worked perfectly. I also had a Griffin PowerJolt USB car charger that I used for my commute. Occasionally, if I left the iPod connected to the PowerJolt all the time, it would "reset" itself and lose all of my played podcasts. To be precise: I would start up my car and suddenly my iPod would be in the exact same state as it was immediately after syncing with iTunes. This was annoying but happened so infrequently it didn't bother me too much.
Many, many months ago I got out of my car, put my iPod in my pocket; a few hours later I took it out and the screen was cracked. I figured I was hosed, and it sat on my shelf for a few months, but a friend told me that some of the early iPod screens were defective and maybe Apple would replace my iPod for free. They did -- they replaced it with an identical model, which is perfect because I don't like gen 2 nanos and hate gen 3 ones.
In the meantime I purchased a new computer. My entire iTunes library was on the E: drive, which I set up on the new computer as the E: drive as well. I copied the itunes .itl and .xml files over, and iTunes found all my music and it seemed to work just fine.
I got my new iPod home, and plugged it in, synced it up, and everything was great. I commuted with my new ipod for the first time in MONTHS and listened to all my favorite podcasts in the car. At the end of the week, I brought it in to the house and plugged it in, and just as I described above, iTunes didn't recognize that I had played any podcasts, and reset my iPod so that it didn't recognize that I had played any podcasts either. I should mention here that it's not just podcasts, this happens with all songs.
I updated iTunes, unplugged my iPod and tested it, and this seemed to fix it. But a few weeks later, it did it again. I reinstalled iTunes, and this seemed to fix it. Then it did it AGAIN. I took the iPod back to Apple. They told me to delete my itl file and rebuild my library. I did. That's when I found out that my album art was all screwed up and rebuilding the library fixed it. Sweet! Rebuilding seemed to fix my podcast problem too... and then... once again it refused to "reverse sync," for lack of a better term. I did some more testing and determined that if I reset the iPod before syncing then it never exhibited the reverse syncing problem.
Occasionally it acted funny when ejecting: it would briefly show the regular iPod menu before the computer would make the usb device ejecting sound, followed by the usb device connecting sound, and iTunes would try to sync with it again. At times I would have to reboot to disconnect it.
I took it back to Apple, and they said they would replace it, saying they had never even heard of such a thing before and it was bound to be my iPod that was defective. I took the opportunity of getting another new iPod to test a few theories of my own.
1. Perhaps the PowerJolt developed a short in it or something, so it was randomly sending a jolt of electricity that was zapping something in the nano causing it to forget what songs had been played. I'm not getting the same symptoms as I got last time but it's still possible. So I won't use the PowerJolt with my new iPod.
2. Maybe there was some residual weirdness from copying my library over from one computer to another. I decided to *gulp* nuke my entire library and start from scratch. I uninstalled iTunes and ran the Windows Installer CleanUp utility from Microsoft. I deleted my library files and shuffled the actual music files around so none of them were in the same place. I re-added and rated 15 or 20 albums to get started, and subscribed to a few podcasts.
This was my first week with the new iPod. We had to make an emergency trip to Michigan, so I only ran the iPod off batteries, and it never completely ran out of juice. I came home, synced it, and... lost all my podcasts again.
So. I don't want to take it back to the Apple store, because they'll probably think I'm some crank, plus I don't know what they can do for me. Yes, I can keep resetting the iPod before every sync but since the original problem is intermittent to begin with this may not be a real fix. Should I be worried about the PowerJolt? It doesn't have a user-replacable fuse which worries me.
I tried to google for my iPod problem, but "reverse syncing" doesn't seem to be the name for what is going wrong, and doing a search for iPod syncing returns a zillion irrelevant links. I'm willing to do anything to make this work, up to re-installing Windows XP, which I just did 4 or 5 months ago when I got the new machine.
Response by poster: Sorry. The podcasts don't disappear, the count gets reset. Imagine an iPod that has been freshly synced. No matter how many songs and podcasts I listen to, it acts like I put the iPod on a shelf for a week when I sync it. New podcasts and new albums get synced to the iPod, but no information gets sent from the iPod to iTunes. The play count and my current place in Podcasts and Audiobooks all get lost.
Again, all of this is intermittent. If I perform a successful sync, play a podcast, and turn around and sync it again immediately, it works fine. If I wait a few hours and sync, still fine. The longer I wait before syncing, the more likely it is to not work.
posted by the_W at 9:48 AM on January 7, 2008
Again, all of this is intermittent. If I perform a successful sync, play a podcast, and turn around and sync it again immediately, it works fine. If I wait a few hours and sync, still fine. The longer I wait before syncing, the more likely it is to not work.
posted by the_W at 9:48 AM on January 7, 2008
I've seen a similar and possibly related issue where the play counts on podcasts are sometimes not updated after playing on an iPod Shuffle. Like your issue, it's intermittent -- sometimes it works properly, other times it doesn't. For me it's just a minor annoyance so I haven't looked into it further. Sorry I can't actually help, but at least you know you're not the only one experiencing something like this.
posted by Emanuel at 3:05 PM on January 8, 2008
posted by Emanuel at 3:05 PM on January 8, 2008
I have a similar issue with a 20g 4G iPod and iTunes running on Vista (the version before 7.5 I believe). I also have iScrobbler running (or whatever the windows version is called). I don't listen to podcasts but I've noticed that my play counts on songs don't get synced, when everything worked fine when syncing against a Mac. I can usually perform a successful sync, updating the play counts, if I reboot my system and then sync it. But subsequent syncs seems to be unsuccessful.
posted by mutantdisco! at 11:00 AM on January 10, 2008
posted by mutantdisco! at 11:00 AM on January 10, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
Are your podcasts gone? (as in not on the ipod?)
or is the *count* on whether or not you played a podcast not incrementing?
posted by filmgeek at 6:10 AM on January 7, 2008