iPod 5thGen help

[SicEmBaylor]

I have a 5th generation ipod, and I'm having a problem with skipped songs.

I've noticed the last couple of days that a LOT of songs on my ipod get skipped over. It'll briefly flash on the screen and then it moves on to the next song. If I try to select and play the song manually then it does the same thing and skips to another song.

Any ideas? I hope to god it's not a hardware problem.

[hurricane'bone]

sounds like the song didn't get transfered over to the iPod or the file has been moved. When was the last time you synced?

[Frozen Sooner]

Run system restore and re sync. That should fix it.

[SicEmBaylor]

K, I'll give that a shot.

[SicEmBaylor]

Well, I'll tell you it's weird.

I figured I'd check on the actual files and try to play them in itunes itself before I did a restore. The files won't play in itunes at all. So, I tried opening them up in Windows media player and they worked fine. I then tried to remove a song complete from my itunes library and then put it back hoping that'd fix the problem and it didn't.

So, I'm out of ideas. I'm not sure whether a restore would fix the problem or if the files themselves somehow got corrupted and won't play in itunes.

[Frozen Sooner]

Are the files DRM protected?

Did you rip them in MP before loading them into iTunes?

Are they a format compatible with iTunes?

[yermom]

you should throw it in the trash, and get a new one ;)

seriously though, what kind of files are they?

[SicEmBaylor]

Well, they aren't DRM and at any rate they've been playing fine as long as I've had these songs. Some of them for well over a year.

They're just mp3 files that were acquired uh not via itunes. ;)

So now I just deleted my entire playlist from itunes and I'm restoring that to see if it does the trick. If not then I'll just have to toss the old files I guess and download new ones.

[yermom]

that sounds weird, like maybe the folder moved on your hard drive or something?

it sounds like the songs are in the index but they don't point to the right place anymore

trashing the playlist and adding the folder again would fix that, if it was the problem

[SicEmBaylor]

Well this gets stranger by the minute. I deleted the playlist and readded the folder and this time it just didn't add the (apparently) corrupted songs back to the playlist.

For example, it only added 1 song from this particular artist but didn't add the other songs.

Here's a screen shot of iTunes on the left only showing one song and the actual songs that should have been added to the right.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v313/SicEmBaylor/weird.jpg

I figured out that I can redownload the songs and add them again, but there's quite a few that are screwed up so that's going to be a pain in the ***.

[GottaHavePride]

Mine did something vaguely like that. Except mine was that I had ripped a few cds directly into iTunes and now for some reason I only have one or two tracks left off those cds. Like, say, for some reason I only have the second movement of Beethoven 9 left on iTunes, despite the fact that I own the entire 5-cd set of all 9 symphonies ad ripped them ALL to iTunes.

[yermom]

yeah, that is weird

you might scan the drive for errors

i wonder if the clusters are lost or something and Media Player/Explorer still knows where they are, but the filesystem doesn't

that might be a bit out there though

[GottaHavePride]

Yeah, I'll have to mess with it when I have some more time.

[SicEmBaylor]

Mine did something vaguely like that. Except mine was that I had ripped a few cds directly into iTunes and now for some reason I only have one or two tracks left off those cds. Like, say, for some reason I only have the second movement of Beethoven 9 left on iTunes, despite the fact that I own the entire 5-cd set of all 9 symphonies ad ripped them ALL to iTunes.

Right, it's almost as if itunes is deleting the music itself except leaving the files on the hard drive and rendering them useless on itunes (like I said I can still play them in media player).

This is basically what I told a friend today at lunch when complaining about this problem and he said something like my music is so ****ty my ipod is cleansing itself of my bad taste in music.

[SicEmBaylor]

yeah, that is weird

you might scan the drive for errors

i wonder if the clusters are lost or something and Media Player/Explorer still knows where they are, but the filesystem doesn't

that might be a bit out there though

I'll try scanning the drive. How exactly do I do that?

Oh you know what....a few days ago I used Registry Mechanic to sweep and fix errors with my registry. This problem happened AFTER I did that so could that be a cause?

[yermom]

i'm not familiar with that process/software...

to scan the drive you can right click it in My Computer and go to Properties, then Tools, then "Check Drive for Errors" or somesuch

there should also be a check box to automatically repair filesystem errors, which is what i'm thinking could be the problem

[soonerboomer93]

I have an iPod, i'm just not sure where it is :(

[soonerboomer93]

it could have seen that as a corrupt short cut and caused a problem. maybe reinstall itunes?

[SicEmBaylor]

it could have seen that as a corrupt short cut and caused a problem. maybe reinstall itunes?

I'll try reinstalling itunes and then checking the drive for errors. Beyond that I'm clueless. I posted the question on the apple forums, so we'll see if anyone there comes up with anything.

[SicEmBaylor]

Reinstalling it didn't help, so I'll check the desk for errors.

Like I said, I posted this question on the Apple support forums and they have an interesting little feature I think you'd all like. The only way to post a new topic is to go through the "Search" process thus making you search for whatever you're going to post about before posting it.

[soonerboomer93]

**** that, I hate damn search nazi's

[yermom]

heh

on a big site like that it's probably not a bad idea

[SicEmBaylor]

I figured out how to fix the problem.
I downloaded this problem called mp3 repair tool and that seems to do the trick.

Now I just have to manually repair each song that's screwed up. ugh.

[soonerboomer93]

you didn't conver them to mp4?

[SicEmBaylor]

you didn't conver them to mp4?

Only video files need to be mp4 don't they?

[SicEmBaylor]

Well, I have checked my HD and everything is fine.
I ran a virus scan and I'm cleaner than an underage girl at an Amish barn raising.
I ran a spyware scan and I'm free of any of that crap.

Still, today I noticed that at least 10 more of my songs went bad. In all, about 10% of my music collection is screwed. I was able to fix about 1/3 of those songs using Mp3 Repair Tool, but some of those have gone bad again.

I'd get new copies of the music, but I don't want to go to the trouble if I can't stop whatever is going wrong.

I'm clueless and I think they're pretty clueless over on the apple forums. One guy thought the itunes music database file itself was corrupted, so he suggested I create a new user account which would create a new database file in itunes and that didn't work either.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ugh3J7dKk

YWIA!

[SicEmBaylor]

I'm still fiddling with this damned thing when I should be studying for a test.

It seems to have concentrated on attacking my Coldplay and Avril Lavigne collections. My Bread albums were also hit hard.