iDunno

December 20, 2007 7:23 AM

Why is iTunes doing this to me?!

Okay, I have a 30G video iPod that I normally use with my Vista laptop that I manage manually. I would like to also use it at work on my XP machine. What I would like to do is manually manage the iPod content on both machines, using my Vista machine for normal music, but my XP machine to get my daily podcasts. I do not want the music files on the XP machine.

I've installed iTunes on my XP machine, but when I plug in my iPod I get all the usual "Do you want to sync?" questions, etc, to which I either cancel or say no. But once I get past all that my iPod does not show up like it should, it is aptly named "diabhal" instead of "Sephira's iPod" and I'm afraid to do anything with it. Can I get iTunes to do what I want? If so, how? Why has the devil possessed my iPod?

posted by sephira to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

One issue I used to have with an iPod at work: iPods insist that they are the E drive when they first meet a Windows machine. If your machine at work already has an E drive, it gets confused and tries to dump a folder on that drive (at my old job, E was a shared drive that was littered with old iTunes folders). If this is the problem, you just need to re-map the drive the iPod is on and you'll be fine in the future.
posted by yerfatma at 7:34 AM on December 20, 2007

I have an E drive on an XP machine and do not have this problem. My iPod is not in disk mode however. I do see it trying to access drive K after syncing (and it is Internet Explorer trying to do the access even though Firefox is the default browser). Much weirdness abounds.
posted by caddis at 7:48 AM on December 20, 2007

I am sure you could use iTunes to manage the iPod from Vista and 'inject' podcasts from the XP machine. The issue I see is that when you connect back to the Vista machine again I'd expect those loaded podcasts to get wiped out.

So, you'd probably be best off using one of the 3rd party managers to put things on the pod on both ends. This AskMe has alternatives for itunes listed and while it's out of date I suspect it'll be a good starting off point. I keep one of these utilities on my ipod (ephpod? I forget) itself in disk mode so I can just plug it in places and run it from there, but I still use iTunes to handle management of files and podcasts.

Is there some particular reason for your seperation of these tasks? Maybe if we knew that there'd be some 3rd option we could suggest.
posted by phearlez at 7:52 AM on December 20, 2007

Response by poster: I want to keep them separated because I don't use my laptop daily, and don't want to have to fire it and iTunes up just for the podcasts. But, I use my XP machine daily and would like to get them there. I want to keep the music off of the XP machine since it's my work computer.

Also to note: when I plug in my iPod here (work) and it shows up as "diabhal", it does not list it as being manually managed.
posted by sephira at 7:59 AM on December 20, 2007

Response by poster: I was able to answer my own question - yerfatmama is right, it was conflicting with another drive on my machine. Renaming the drive fixed the issue.
posted by sephira at 10:33 AM on December 20, 2007