Months ago, I posted information about iPodExtract. It’s a great way to pull music off of your iPod if you have somehow lost your music library on your PC. The only problem is that it doesn’t work with many newer devices such as my 3rd generation iPod Nano.

Luckily I discovered a new method to save my precious music files. Music Rescue completely blew me away with the ease of use. When you install it, it detects your iPod automatically. You can then choose the folder you wish to extract the music to. Here’s the kicker. You’re files are rescued and restored to where you won’t know the difference. They will be in their original format as if they never were lost from your iTunes library.

I have only had a chance to play with the PC/Windows version, but there is a Mac version as well that I am sure is just as robust.

How to get music from your computer to your iPod music player.

1. Download iTunes and install it.

2. Launch iTunes and you can drag and drop the song files or folders with the music files to the iTunes window. The music files will then be added to the iTunes library.

3. Attach your iPod to the computer. You can then drag and drop the songs from the iTunes library over to the iPod device, which should be listed on the left side.

Note: The first time you connect an iPod to a computer, it may ask you to setup the device with a name and a few other preferences.

4. It can take a while for music files to transfer. You can see the progress of the file transfer at the top of the iTunes screen. When you are done moving files to the iPod, you can eject it by pressing the eject icon next to the device on the left side.

How to transfer specific songs or all songs from a CD to the iPod using iTunes.

1. Open iTunes and insert the CD that you wish to import.

2. You might get a prompt to import the CD. If you want to import every song on the disc, select Yes and skip to Step 5. If you only want to import specific songs from the CD, click No.

3. Select the CD on the left side. You can now uncheck the songs you don’t want to import.

4. Click Import CD in the lower right corner of the screen.

5. iTunes will start importing music from the disc.

6. Attach your iPod to the computer.

7. Click Library on the left side of the iTunes screen. Drag and drop the songs that have been imported over to your iPod device which should also be listed on the left side.

8. Eject your iPod when it’s done transferring the songs and enjoy.

My iPod Nano recently started skipping some songs here and there. I thought that maybe there was a problem with the music file, but it would play fine on the PC. I had purchased the song in iTunes, so it wasn’t a problem with a rouge file or anything like that. I tried these steps recommended by Apple here.

First I reauthorized my iTunes.

1. In iTunes, choose Deauthorize Computer from the Store menu (your computer needs to be connected to the Internet).
2. In the resulting dialog, enter your Apple ID and password.
3. Click OK.

That didn’t work, so I had to restore my iPod to the factory settings. Finally that did it. It was kind of annoying to have to reload all of my music over again.

Prevent the iPod Touch from syncing just 1 time when you connect it to the computer.

1. Open iTunes.

2. Windows: Hold down Shift and CTRL until you see the device appear in iTunes.
Mac: Hold down Command and Option until you see the device appear in iTunes.

Prevent your iPod Touch from automatically syncing when you plug in the device to your computer.

1. With the iPod Touch connected to the computer, select the device in iTunes.

2. Click the Summary tab.

3. Uncheck the box Open iTunes when this iPod is connected.

Now you can sync the device only when you want to by clicking the Sync button in the lower right corner of the window.

My iTunes was a rickety mess. I had links to songs that didn’t exist on my hard drive anymore, duplicates and a bunch of playlists that I didn’t need anymore. I wanted to start over. I could delete all of this data by individually selecting each item and deleting them, but that’s a pain. There is an easier way. Here’s what I did.

1. Close iTunes.

2. Open My Documents > My Music > iTunes.

3. Right-click iTunes Music Library.xml and select Rename. Give it a name of iTunes Music Library.old. Do the same thing for the iTunes Library.itl file.

4. Open iTunes. Everything should be cleared now. The library, playlist, ratings will then be cleared out. New iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl files will be created.

5. You can now drag and drop your music files you want to get back to the main window of iTunes. The main folder for iTunes music is located at My Documents > My Music > iTunes > iTunes Music. It’s a good idea to organize your music files first before you re-add your music files back to iTunes to avoid duplicates and errant file names.

Backing up your music files is very important. A hard drive crash could totally wipe out your entire music library that you’ve spent years building. Use these steps to backup your iTunes music files for storage or to move them to another PC.

To perform these steps, you will need a CD or DVD burner and enough CD’s or DVD’s to store all of your music files.

1. In iTunes, Click File > Back Up to Disc…

2. Select wheither you would like to Back up entire iTunes library and playlists or Back up only iTunes purchases. You can also select if you only want to backup music files that have been added or changed since your last backup. Click Backup when ready.

3. Insert either a writable CD or DVD into your disc drive. iTunes will then begin preparing the backup and writing the files.

4. Insert more CD’s or DVD’s if prompted.

If you’re getting Error 1418 in iTunes when you try to sync your iPod, try the following steps to fix this issue:

1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 softpub.dll

2. When you receive the message that the DLL has been registered, click OK and perform the same steps for each of the following commands one by one under Start > Run:

regsvr32 wintrust.dll
regsvr32 dssenh.dll
regsvr32 rsaenh.dll
regsvr32 gpkcsp.dll
regsvr32 sccbase.dll
regsvr32 slbcsp.dll
regsvr32 mssip32.dll
regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll
regsvr32 initpki.dll

If these steps do not fix the issue, see if you can disconnect any other USB devices from your computer (except keyboard and mouse) to see if that fixes the issue.
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When you try to start iTunes, you get an error message that says:

The iTunes Library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file.

This happens because, somehow the iTunes Library.itl file got set as read only. You can fix this by doing the following steps:

1. Open the My Documents folder.

2. Open the My Music folder.

3. Open the iTunes folder

4. Right-click the iTunes Library.itl file and select Properties.

5. Uncheck Read-only.

6. Click OK.

Now you should be able to start iTunes without the error.

There are many ways to convert FLAC files to MP3 in Windows. Which one is the easiest though? Well there is a web site that will convert almost anything, including those formats. It’s very easy, but it’s also very slow. It converts only one file at a time.

For faster conversions, your best bet is to do the following:

1. Download and install dBpoweramp.

2. Download and install the FLAC codec for dBpoweramp.

3. Click Start > Programs > dBpoweramp Music Converter > dBpoweramp
Batch Converter

4. Select the folders where your FLAC files are located. Then check the files you wish to be converted. Click Convert after they are all selected.

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There seem to be many people that aren’t aware that you can add games to your iPod Nano (3rd generation) or iPod (5th generation). The Apple supported way is as follows.

1. Open the iTunes Store in iTunes.

2. Click the iPod Games link on the left store menu.

3. Select the game you want to add and click Buy Game.

4. Select your iPod nano on the left menu list and click the Games tab.

5. Select Sync games.

6. Click All games.

7. Click Apply.

I had a problem where a window would appear with a folder that said iPod_Control whenever I attached my iPod or put music on it using iTunes. The window would disappear after about 5 seconds.

For some reason, my iPod was detected by Windows as a USB Mass Storage Device. I noticed that there were 2 of these listed in my Device Manager. One of them seemed to indicate a problem with a little yellow icon. After removing both of these Mass Storage Devices, I then restarted my computer. The problem was then solved.

Here is a step by step process on how I did this.

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There have been many users of iTunes that have hit a problem when they upgraded to version 7.6. After the upgrade, problems are occurring where no audio is playing.

The problem appears to be with QuickTime, which is bundled with iTunes. Some users downgraded to an older version of iTunes or QuickTime to fix the problem. However now there appears to be a fix available. You can simply download the new version of QuickTime.

When trying to burn a music CD with iTunes, you get the following message:

The songs in this playlist will not fit on one Audio CD
Do you want to create multiple Audio CDs with this playlist split across them?
This will require more than one blank CD to complete.

even though you are not trying to burn more than the CD can take.

I came across this problem and discovered that it was a problem with an MP3 file I had downloaded from the Internet. The file was corrupted and was causing this problem.

I had to remove one song at a time and try to burn the compilation without that song in order to track down exactly which file was causing the issue. Once the song was removed, iTunes burned the audio CD fine.