IPod Shuffle First Generation Problems

[mrflash]

Hi,

I've had my first generation IPod Shuffle (1GB) about 3 years and am having some bizzare problems this week and similar problems have also affected a friend of a friend (whom I've never met but heard he was having similar problems via someone else I know). Either way my IPod now seems to take forever (i.e. about 25 mins to sync - previous 45 seconds at best). When it did sync I switched playlists over and deleted tracks that I no longer wanted - as I have done for the last three years - (again this unusually took forever) and disconnected everything. Tried it the following morning and it still had the original songs on it (incidentally it worked fine for listening still). For some reason it doesn't seem to sync or allow me to remove the files from it. I have hit it with the reset utility which managed to strip the files off of it - but the now empty IPod is still taking forever to sync (I have had to use force quit to get out of ITunes on every occasion and use "Ctrl" "Command" "Power Button" to force resets). In short I think something is very wrong with it - or it may have passed on and it's time for me to get a second generation. I would be grateful for any advice that anyone may have. Thanks in advance.

The technical specs of what I think the relevant elements are (in case this helps):

12" G4 Powerbook (Power PC)
Mac OSX 10.4.9
I Tunes 7.6.2
IPod Shuffle (First Generation)

I have also run a full sweep with my Intego Virus Barrier X5 and Net Barrier and my machine is clean. Really confused as to why this has just played up after three years..........

Thanks in advance,

[mrflash]

A slight update on my problems:

Am now running

Mac OSX 10.4.11

and

I Tunes 8.0.1

The I Pod now no longer holds its name every time that I plug it in since the reset (even though it now holds the songs on it) and I am still having the syncing issue (it just takes forever). To take 1 song off of it and add 15 songs (around 900 megs of data) took about 25 minutes. It possibly took a shorter time as I waiting for it to sync and say it was "safe to disconnect" but this never came. I took the "force quit" option as the sync was never coming and force quit told me I Tunes was "not responding" so I am figuring something is fundimentally wrong somewhere. The newly loaded songs play fine on the I Pod, and the rest of the Mac works but just would be grateful for any second opinions as something is definately not right.

[mrflash]

Still having grief with this one. It seems to be a syncing issue as today it took me 25 mins to delete the contents of what I had on the IPod (+3 forced quits). It then spent 10 mins syncing an empty IPod (I've turned Auto Fill off).

Was there a huge change in set ups from earlier versions of I Tunes (7.0~ish) to around 7.6? I am figuring that it has to be a software issue as I tried a second generation shuffle in it today and it did the same thing - even when I told it to not sync the other shuffle to my library. I have a feeling it is trying to sync my entire library (20+GB) and this is causing the issue. I just want to plug it in and drag and drop like I used to be able to - so I'm figuring that there is an internal software settings change that I haven't spotted an option that was off but under a newer version is now on. As above any advice would be appreciated as this is just awkward.

[DeltaMac]

Might be worth trying this reset utility - http://support.apple.com/downloads/iPod_Reset_Utility_1_0_3_for_Mac

[mrflash]

Might be worth trying this reset utility - http://support.apple.com/downloads/iPod_Reset_Utility_1_0_3_for_Mac

Thanks for the advice but have already got it covered:

I have hit it with the reset utility which managed to strip the files off of it - but the now empty IPod is still taking forever to sync (I have had to use force quit to get out of ITunes on every occasion and use "Ctrl" "Command" "Power Button" to force resets)

Think something is terminally wrong with the setup for this somewhere (is there a remote possibility something in my Intego Suite is creating grief in transferring files? - doubt it as my external hard drive still works fine but just wondering). Also noted since when does I Tunes copy the files across and then update every file that it has just copied? Have I missed something?

[mrflash]

Think something is terminally wrong with the setup for this somewhere (is there a remote possibility something in my Intego Suite is creating grief in transferring files? - doubt it as my external hard drive still works fine but just wondering).

Just in case anyone wondered this turned out to be the problem. Once I made the I-Pod a "trusted zone" within my Virus BarrierX5 suite I had no problem transferring data. As I said above I found this somewhat bizarre as it didn't have any issues with my external hard drive (having said that it was all one way traffic onto the hard drive and not off of it as it didn't try and sync itself....). Just thought I would post this in case it helps someone in the future.