Cannot sync itunes library. "The required file cannot be found"

Question

Trying to get my friends ipod working. I've been working on it for several days now and not making much progress. I'm not impressed. It's a 20GB Ipod, model M9282LL if that helps. Trying to get it working with windows vista.

A few questions:

1. When everything is working normally, will the ipod show up as a logical drive in windows explorer so you can transfer music back and forth or are you obligated to use itunes to transfer?

2. I'm assuming the answer to 1 is no, so I'm trying to get Itunes working. First of all it says "this ipod was synced to another itunes library do you want to delete all the files on the ipod to continue"?? What's up with that? Well, she lost 10,000 songs because she answered yes by mistake. (the Ipod was a gift, the person pre loaded it with music). It seems if you answer NO to the above question, itunes will not recognize the ipod again. I get a windows message stating "unrecognized hardware". Is this their way of preventing people from sharing music?

3. I reloaded the software, and upgraded to verson 7 of itunes. Reset the ipod to factory settings. Plugged in the ipod and answered yes, erase everything and sync to my library. It started doing the sync, stating, "syncing file 1 of 85" or something to that effect. Then immediately presented the message "The ipod cannot be synced. The required file cannot be found". This is a really weak message. Why don't they tell me the name of the required file? Anyway, I don't think they're talking about the music file, I can play it, it works fine.

4. Are there two different ipods? One for mac and one for windows? Is it possible she has a mac ipod and we're trying to make it work in windows?

5. final question, does anyone want to buy an ipod? haha,

Thanks in advance for your help. (just joking about selling her ipod)

Answer 1

phew, ok uhm it sounds like itunes isnt or did not install the firmware onto the ipod correctly, which could cause an error message such as the one you mentioned. you may need to put the ipod into dfu mode instead of recovery mode, im not sure how to do that if its an older 20g model as i never had to...apple's website should help with that.

if software (aka firmware) isnt the problem then it may be your computer that isn't recognizing it...it may be your usb cable or port. if you have more than one usb port then trying using the other one that you havent already. if its not the port try boring another usb cable from a friend as all usb cables for ipods are the same.

ipods are the same for all computers they're just formatted differently based on what system your running mac/windows. if the person who gave it to her formatted it on a mac you may have to reformat it to work with windows...again my memory isnt serving me well on how to reformat other than just restoring it again.

lastly it could be itunes in general..try un-installing then re-installing itunes...take it completly off your computer when you do this though.

if none of this works, either contact me with an update and or call apple's support center tomorrow