Apple released iOS 9 this week, so I was thinking I would need to sync with my computer to get the update. I don’t sync that often, so I hadn’t done it since I got the iPod back in July. Since then, I’ve upgraded that computer to Windows 10. Also there was a new version of iTunes to download, as always. The iPod upgraded to iOS 9 on its own, so that wasn’t a problem, but I still thought it would be good to do a sync. Kiwix (the Wikipedia app) was updated as well and now it crashed as soon as I opened it. Sometimes you can uninstall an app and then download it again to avoid crashes like that, but in this case, I would also need to download the 16 GB data file, which I didn’t really want to do.
Anyway, the new version of iTunes could not see the iPod during the sync even though it was connected with the USB cable. I restarted the iPod to see if that helped (nope) and then the computer (nope). Then both the iPod and computer (nope). I found a website that said you could uninstall iTunes, Quicktime, and the Apple Application Support programs in Windows, then reinstall them. Then restart the computer, restart the iPod, nope. I tried going in and removing the driver, but I wasn’t sure how to do this in Windows 10. I was able to remove the iPod in the Connected Devices control panel, but when I plugged it in again, it just reinstalled the same driver. The critical clue to the problem was that every time I plugged the iPod into the computer, instead of the iPod asking if I wanted to trust the computer like it should, it asked if I wanted to give the computer access to my photos and videos. It turns out it only does that when iTunes isn’t installed on the computer and Windows wants to mount the iPod as if it were a flash drive. But iTunes *was* installed. Several times. However, the correct driver was not installed. Instead Windows was using a Microsoft driver and even when I reinstalled all the Apple software, the driver was not updated to the Apple one. I’m not sure if that is Apple’s fault or Microsoft’s, but that was why I was having the problem.
Eventually I found a page that said you had to go into device manager while the iPod was connected, find the iPod in the device list, then get properties, uninstall the driver and search in the correct folder (Program Files>Common>Apple>Mobile Device Support) for the driver. This took a while to install the driver, but now everything worked great.
Sort of. Kiwix wouldn’t copy itself from the iPod to iTunes, so I wound up downloading it via iTunes. To install books in Kiwix now you can use file sharing, but it took a while for me to find out how to do file sharing in iTunes. While the iPod is connected you look at its apps and then you can click on the app and open file sharing. Then you can add a file to the app. I already had the Wikipedia dump on my laptop, so I was able to add it to Kiwix from iTunes. It still took a while to transfer the 16 GB file, but by the time I got back from a much postponed walk with the dogs, it was all ready. And really, that’s a much better way of dealing with such a giant file (I only have to download it once and then can copy it to computers, tablets, and iPod and have offline Wikipedia on all of them!).
Anyway, this was how I spent most of my free time on Thursday morning and night.