iTunes question

jackieb

We've never had any ipods before but my daughter got an ipod touch for her Christmas. I set up an iTunes account and managed to copy some of her cd's to her ipod easily enough. She was desperate for me to get her some music videos. So I bought 4 and downloaded them to her ipod too - no problem. . Everything was fine. She had her 4 music videos, and some of her own cd's onto her ipod. The following day her brother plugged her ipod into the computer via the USB cable to charge. When I looked on her ipod it was empty - no music, nothing. I managed to sync most of the stuff back to her ipod, but I lost 2 of the music videos i'd bought. I can't find them anywhere on iTunes. I had to buy 2 of them again.

She got the ipod on Christmas day and we've only charged it the once. I'm scared to charge it again incase we lose stuff again. It's not too bad if it's the cd's she has already but it's going to be pretty expensive if we lose the videos each time we charge the thing (well it won't be, because i'm not going to keep spending £1.89 for each video that gets lost!) Does anyone have any ideas what could have happened? My son said he only plugged it in. He could have done something and isn't admitting to it though.

I've got 2 receipts from iTunes via email, showing that i've bought 2 of the music videos twice.

I thought they would have stayed on the iTune account. I can't understand why 2 went missing when i'd bought 4 at the same time.

Sorry for waffling.

masterthief

ok, its a bit late and I'm not in the best state to help right now, but will do what I can - apologies if I miss anything out (will reread 2moro and repost if necessary).


(1) yes DS could have done something to ipod and isn't admitting it. however, this is unlikely. to purposely erase the ipod is actually not the easiest thing to do (will explain this point a bit more later).

(2) did he plug it into the computer you used to fill the ipod with songs/videos? or did he plug it into another computer? a simplification of what happens is this - you plug ipod into pc(a) and load it with songs. if you then plug it into pc(b) and try to add songs from pc(b) it can erase the songs/videos which are already on the ipod. its weird, I know, and there is software available to prevent this issue, but it isn't (to the best of my knowledge) available in the usual ipod/itunes software.

(3) if DS plugged the ipod into pc(b) not pc(a) this may account for the songs 'going missing' and DS may have intentionally or unintentionally done this. there's a very good chance it was unintentional, so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

(4) the songs you added to the ipod and the vids you downloaded should, however, till be on the computer somewhere. when u put stuff on an ipod, its not like moving a piece of paper out of one box into another. its more like making a photocopy, if this makes sense. you should have the songs/videos on the ipod and on the computer where they downloaded.

(5) these songs/vids should be stored in your itunes folder. try putting itunes on, then clicking 'library' then typing into the "search box" (shld b in the top right hand corner of itunes) the titles of the songs/vids in question, or the artists name(s). this shld bring them up (do them one by one).

(6) if step (5) doesn't work, try searching for them on your desktop/HD. on a mac to do this click on the hard drive icon (shld say summat like 'your name's hard drive' or 'mac' hd' or something similar - a grey icon that doesnt look like any of the other icons). once you do this you shld again get a similar search button in the top right hand corner of a box which appears after dbl clicking the HD icon. type the song names in and hopefully u will find them./on WINDOWS click "start" and then click "search" and use that.

(7) will have to repost re finding them on your computer (probs missed a couple of other checks out), but if the files aren't on your computer, then its unlikely DS was smart enough to erase them from both the ipod and the computer. that wld take a bit of ingenuity and malice. as an ex-teenager I'd say any malice is usually outweighed by sloth.

(8) you shouldn't have to purchase music more than once, so don't repurchase these tracks again. will recheck the thread tomorrow daytime and try to offer further advice re finding the files on your comupter. in the meantime, let me know if this works and what computer you're on (I'm assuming windows).

(9) charging the ipod will be fine and wont damage it. I would advise charging it through the mains if you have the necessary connectors (either through an ipod dock/speaker system, or using the firewire adapter plugged into a white wall plug which may/may not have been in with the packaging you recieved when purchasing the ipod. don't plug it into the computer to charge it unless thats the only option.

(10) most of all, DONT WORRY - if it was an xmas gift its still under the apple 1 year warrantee so if these/other posters tips dont work, you can get it either repaired or replaced (if you get a replacement, make it clear you want a BRAND NEW ipod touch as a replacement - will explain this bit more if its what you do - pm me about it if I don't post on it, but basically apple have a thing with replacing ipods out of warrantee for batterry issues with 2nd hand ipods with similar storage capacity - since this is not a battery issue and its within warrantee you should get a NEW ipod as a replacement - I doubt they'd try to give you a 2nd hand one, so this is just a cautionary point). apple dont like negative press, so they're generally pretty good on this (once had an apple laptop with faulty gxf and they were utterly apologetic in replacing it and gave me a free upgrade for the inconvenience).

(11) you might want to try going to apple.com and searching "ipod touch troubleshooting" if you dont get decent replies on this site. another good site to try is spymac (cant remember the exact url, but if you google 'spymac' you'll get the link and they're pretty up to date). sorry its too late for me to do this competently, but if problems persist tomorrow, let me know and I'll get on to it (I'm usually good at following up on posts - but you might want to pm me if problems persist just to remind me to recheck this thread)

finally apologies if the bullet points seem condescending - they're not, its just that its late and I needed to organise my thoughts/points. hope this helps, if not pm me or wait til I/others swing by tomorrow. And I'm really sorry you're having this problem - as a young person (23) with a bunch of apple gear, I know how p!$$ed off I'd be if/when I've had the problems you've described.

masterthief

yup, okay, re point (1)....


Disclaimer - I know this holds for ordinary ipods, not too sre about ipod touch as I dont have one or access to one. however, there is no reason for the coding to differ, so what Im saying should be right.

DSDS couldn't easily erase contents of ipod since they are 'protected' to prevent transfering song from the ipod to your computer. he could do it by plugging it in, going into itunes and reformatting the ipod or resetting it. this is fairly simple to do, but if you reset or restore the ipod (the easy things to do) it usually tries to reload with songs. if the ipod had no songs on it it is unlikely he did this. reformatting (which would result in there being no songs on the ipod) causes the ipod screen to display a msg along the lines of C://user/insertyournamehere/blahblahblah/ (that's what it has done on all my old ipods - ipod 2nd generation, iPod mini, 1st generation iPod - when I've reformatted them so it should still do that now). if the ipod doesnt show a msg like that its really really unlikely your son reformatted it. also, if reformatted you wont get the usual menu screen with "artists, albums, playlists, etc" listed. you will just get that C;// line I mentioned.

and if he'd tampered with it, its a big coincidence that the songs off the ipod also disapeared off the computer. he'd have to find the original files on the coputer and delete them. this is a lot of work for general malice - unless he's really vindictive he'd have given up before reaching this step.

not too sure about contact procedures for itunes, but if you do return the ipod for a rpelacement, raise this issue with them. and MAKE SURE YOU KEEP ALL RECEIPTS. you ought to be able to get some refund or credit given the problem has been with apple downloaded files and apple hardware.

jackieb

Not condescending at all. Thank you for taking the trouble to type all that out!

The ipod was plugged into the computer that I used to download the music from.

I haven't yet bought a mains charger, as I didn't know what i'd actually get with the ipod (never having had one before, and couldn't find much info online). I do intend to get one as soon as possible though.

Hmm, that's strange. I can find 1 copy each of the 2 music videos I bought twice from iTunes. And 2 copies each of the 2 music videos I bought once! If that makes any sense. I checked my receipt from iTunes on my e-mail, and i'm right. I didn't muddle them up.

My ds could have done something and not admitted it. He's 15 but not malicious lol

I'm in the middle of searching Windows for them. Not found anything yet. I'll post tomorrow as I need to get to my bed lol. You'd think if I could find them on iTunes then they'd be on the computer. My brain is fried at the mo. Might be better after a sleep.

The iPod is working great otherwise. It's a brilliant wee thing! I'm probably just not up to it yet.

Thank again for posting. I appreciate your help.

jackieb

Still here! Because it's been bugging me!!

I think I may have figured out what's happened. I bought the music videos when on my own desktop. When my ds had been on the computer he was on under his own name. I have just logged off of his one and back onto my own. Opened up iTunes and there were the extra music videos! I'm not sure what happened and why I only lost the 2 videos, and why the rest of the music was wiped off of the iPod. I live and learn (learn not to let ds touch the Touch!! lol)

Fingers crossed everything stays on when I charge it next time.

teadrinker_3

You might email itunes and ask them to let you recover the videos you have purchased. They will tell you you should back them up. I recently recovered some tunes from them with a quick email, but I hasten to add it is not their usual practise.

jackieb

Thanks teadrinker. I already bought 2 of them again as I didn't want to admit to my daughter that we'd lost them! I did have a look at the FAQ's on the iTunes site, and it did say you could only download them once. I've got them all on iTunes now. I did read that iTunes recommend backing them up with a disc.

masterthief

ok, I really should have thought of that - all the computers I use only have one user set-up on them, so this is the kind of thing I forget to mention, lol. but the point I made about using different computers holds, its just in this case its the different users registered on a single computer. glad you got it srted though.

agreed with teadrinker - I don't dl from itunes store myself, but would recommend copying anything downloaded to a cd or dvd (check if you have a cd rewriter, if so get CD RW disc so you can copy songs and update that one disc, otherwise you're gonna be buy lots of blank discs if you dl regularly).


itunes might have some way of you getting the cash back on the repurchases, or a couple of free dls. not using the site myself its difficult to say (e.g. if the support/contact team is not based in UK it might be difficult keeping in contact with them).

if the songs.vids show up in your itunes they will be on your computer (itunes is stored on your computer, so anything stored in itunes has to be stored on your computer, if this makes sense), but there's a small chance that the file name might be weird or your search may have only been of certain parts of your HD - if you still can't find them tomorrow, pm me and I'll go into more details about this.

and I'd apologise/be nice to DS as it v. v. v. probs wasn't his fault this happened. again, not trying to intrude/be condescednding, I just recall back to when I was that age and my non-tech-savvy mum could say some things which cut a bit deeper than she probs realised, when the problem wasn't my fault.

oh, and if you're the 'user' who'll be buying music for DD's ipod in future, I can tell you how to set up itunes in your 'shared folder' so this problem shouldn't happen again (it basically means you'll all have all your music in one itunes programme, so DS and DD and you all have access to the same music when you log in - this ought to prevent this problem happening again). but this last bit really will have to wait until tomorrow - when Ihave to think about howto spell words I know how to spell, it's time for me to sleep, lol.

bet you DD will be delighted that you've sorted the problem - she'll probs be desperate for you to sort the ipod out for her again - I advise you not to tell her its fixed until after you have had a lie in. And a cup of coffee. In bed. Courtesy of DD.

masterthief

lol, I'm sure that post wasn't that long when I was writing it............