iPod iPod and USB problem

[ScotRobson]

Hi

A friend of mine has a PC lap top which is about 3 years old. She has recently bought an iPod mini. She lives in France now so I cant check her machine to see what the problem is, but she has contacted me to tell me of her problem.

She has loaded all her songs onto iTunes fine, but when she connects her iPod via the USB lead she gets a message pop up on iTunes saying something like -------The USB device is not recognised, something about High speed USB and mention of USB host controller?

Sorry but I cant remember the exact message as she told me over the phone last night.

To me it sounds like her computer may be too old to work with the USB lead that came with the iPod and she might need some sort of adapter? Is this the case or am I very wrong. I've never heard of this before.

Many thanks
Scot

 

[mad jew]

For what it's worth, I got that same error message when I first installed a USB 2.0 card but had forgotten to install the drivers. Maybe she needs to update the drivers from the computers manufacturer's website.

Also, do you know what operating system she's on? At three years old, it's probably safe to assume XP, right?

 

[ScotRobson]

For what it's worth, I got that same error message when I first installed a USB 2.0 card but had forgotten to install the drivers. Maybe she needs to update the drivers from the computers manufacturer's website.

Also, do you know what operating system she's on? At three years old, it's probably safe to assume XP, right?

Yeah it is a Toshiba laptop, 3 yrs old running XP.

Is a USB 2 card something she would need? Or should that already be in there?

Many thanks for the reply.
Scot
x

 

[mad jew]

Well, she may only have a USB 1.0 card but that'll work fine from my experience, just it'll be dog slow. Since it's a laptop, and therefore more likely that the USB card was already installed on manufacture, the drivers are probably correct anyway. However, in the unlikely even that she's installed a third-party card, she should make sure she loaded the drivers in from the provided disks.

In short, I think the most likely reason it's saying this is because she's only got USB 1.0 and she's being warned it will be slow. However, if this is the case, she'll be able to upload songs.

Finally, get her to make sure it's not a Mac-formatted iPod.
From the iPod menu, select Settings then About and scroll down until it says "Windows formatted". If this doesn't appear, make sure she has the iPod software on her laptop too. It can be downloaded here. Maybe get her to run this program anyway. It'll find the iPod and format it properly.

This last bit will probably fix it, ignore the drivers thing until you've checked this doesn't work.

 

[ScotRobson]

Well, she may only have a USB 1.0 card but that'll work fine from my experience, just it'll be dog slow.

Yeah that is what I thought should happen.

Will get her to try the things you have suggested. Many thanks for your help.

Scot

 

[mad jew]

Sorry, I've just got back from a run so I'm not being very comprehensible.

Just make sure she's loaded in the software from the supplied CD or the link I gave. Tell her to ignore the warning and run that little program, it'll all sort itself out.