What not to do with your iPod …. the adventure begins.

You may have followed my earlier posts about setting up my MacBook Pro to run multiple operating systems. I finally landed on using VMWare to allow my computer to run Windows Vista, Windows XP and Linux and have been merrily computing along since setting this environment up. 

Two days ago, I was taking advantage of my multi OS setup. On the OSX side, I was charging my iPod Touch and downloading updates from iTunes. On the multitasking side, I was running Windows XP, setting up Band in a Box and Powertracks for some work at CATC By the Water (see yesterday’s post). 

Things were zipping along on all fronts when an unexpected adventure started. When the iTunes download completed, my iTouch ‘woke up’ from its peaceful charging state and iTunes initiated the software installation process. At the same time, Windows XP initiated its ‘found new hardware’ process since I had not used my iTouch with XP before. In effect both operating systems, OSX and XP, started reading and writing information to the iPod at the same time. I was presented with new screen on my iPod that I had not seen before (not good) and iTunes was prompting me to reset the iPod’s state to factory defaults. 

The bottom line: this simultaneous dual access corrupted the data on my iTouch. Now I had an opportunity to learn about the reset and restore processes. Fortunately for me, this three step process worked flawlessly: 

1. Restore iPod to factory default settings (like a new out ‘of the box’ iPod) to reset the iPod operating system

2. Choose the restore from iTunes library option (recovers music, videos, podcasts etc.)

3. Resync updates and prior purchases against the iTunes store records.

After about an hour, I had my iTouch fully operational and in the state before I started my adventure. The only manually steps I needed to complete were resetting my security password and reentering my WIFI network settings (access keys). Hats off to the Apple developers for having a clean and reliable process for for restoring iPods. 

Back in business, and multitasking with a little more knowledge 🙂

~ Mark