Guys,

I hate iTunes, I really do. But there's no escaping it if you want to manage your tunes with an iPod.

I've got one of these iPad nano's of the latest generation. I think it's a brilliant piece of engineering, but as said, I hate iTunes. I think it's the one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had the displeasure to work with. I though Apple was renowned for its use-friendliness? I certainly don't find any proof of this when I'm using iTunes... Mind you, I'm using the Windows version, I can only hope the Mac version is better.

Now, my problem: after a lot of tinkering, I finally found out just how exactly I can get tunes onto my iPod with it. I've been listening to those for a couple of months, but now I want to add some extra tunes. iTunes claimes it can't sync to my iPod beacuse it's synced to another iTunes library. It's solution is to simply erase the complete iPod and start from scratch. I'm sorry, but this is complete BS. I'm the only user of this device. It's only been connected to this specific computer. (Come to think of it, I did upgrade my PC's motherboad some time ago, maybe that had something to do with it?)

Anyway, when I plug in the iPod, it shows up under 'devices'. By clicking on the device and the "music" folder directly below it, I can see my tunes, but they are greyed out. The "music" tab under "library" doesn't show anything...WTF?

I can't find a decent solution for this issue online. I found one which says to backup everything on the iPad, then have it erased and then restore the backup again, but I'm guessing this is a tutorial for older iTunes version because this one (10.6.3.25) doesn't show this "backup" option.

Now, I guess I could give in and give iTunes what it wants by letting it erase the iPod. But I's like to avoid this if I can, because it would be a lot of work putting everything back. After all, it does see the tunes under the "device" tab, so why doesn't it simply create a new iTunes library from that?

Any advice would be deeply appreciated!

Thx!

Hmmm... it seems it's definitely got something do do with the installation of the new motherboard and re-installation of Windows 7. As claimed here. The old installation of windows is gone, and so are my iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl files. So I guess I'll have to erase the iPod after all. Darn.

Why oh why can't iTunes simply create it's iTunes libraty from the files it finds on the iPod itself? The Empeg was able to do that more than 10 years ago!

I know it is not a fix to your problem with iTunes specifically, but CopyTransManager is a life saver if you don't like iTunes.
It will turn your iPod management to a more logic "drop to/from it the tunes you like, from/to your HDD". That's as easy as it gets. It was recommended quite a few times on this board, and most people, including me, loved it.

http://www.copytrans.net/copytransmanager.php

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll make sure to try it!

Continuing with my problem, I just found a handy little utility that just saved my bacon. It's called SharePod, and it lets you copy everything from the iPod back to the computer.

For it to work I had to check "manually manage music and videos" in iTunes, and strangely enough that made iTunes read all the stuff off of the iPod. But it still doesn't re-create the iTunes library. Shame.
Oh well, since I've got all the files from the iPod itself now, it'll be very easy to restore if I do have to erase it after all. (most likely I guess)...

iTunes on the Mac is 99% identical to the Windows version.

Stop right there.

Rythmbox is the way to escape it.

Linux only, I bet? But I must admit, making the jump to 100% Linux instead of Windows is becoming more appealing by the day, especially now with Windows 8 upcoming (which seems a recipe for disaster if you ask me). It's nice to see there's an alternative for almost every application on Linux.

Uhhhh... yeah. What he said.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, this is the one thing that upsets me the most about Apple's products. It's frightening how they're so inexorably tied to, not just that PC, but that particular installation of the OS on that particular hard disk. Your PC's hard disk needs replacing? Guess what, you have to reformat your ipod or iphone, too. Want to manage or back up your iphone onto your home PC and your work PC for redundancy and convenience? Too bad, you have to pick one.

This is just terrible.

The decision on the iPod was to treat it as a spoke, with the hub being the computer. This was done with the idea that people may have multiple devices they sync to. Source of truth in this case makes sense to put it in the center.

The downside is that as you found, if you wipe the source of truth (the iTunes Library files), it's can't be easily recreated from any of the spoke devices.

Apple is shifting away from this model, but it requires an iOS device for playback of the music. iTunes Match has been working well for me so far, allowing me to add music at any device. Once added, all other devices see it without a manual sync. Combine with ensuring one Mac always has local copies and my backups, I should be good to go even if the cloud portion has issues.