I-pod assistance needed - moving to new PC and old PC not working
 

Basic facts above

I bought a new PC months ago and am finally getting around to getting whatever I need off of it so I can decommission it.

Ran into a problem last week when I fired up the old PC.

Old PC which I had used to sync ipod/itunes has 'issues' (hard drive is showing 'Not Installed' in set up, so old PC won't boot. It is there, but I may have mucked up something when I mistakenly was in the setup menu....

Is there a way to turn off whatever setting is on the ipod that has it linked to the old pc so I can download the ipod onto the new PC? I get an error message when I hook up the ipod to the new PC, saying it is already linked to another PC.

Apple store says I'm out of luck, but I can't believe that there's not some workaround. They say I have to first de-link the ipod and the old pc (which I can't do at the moment due to the aforementioned hard drive not being 'installed'.)

I have both songs that I've purchased off iTunes, plus a bunch of songs that I've ripped (legally) onto the ipod. I don't want to lose what I've got on the ipod and I'd like to add things to it, but can't until I get this issue resolved.

Separately, on the old PC, is there a way to have the hard drive re-installed or somehow recognized to that I can get the system to boot up? It has an A: floppy slot, but of course I don't have a DOS boot disk anywhere that I can find.
The machine was running XP (slowly) before these issues cropped up. It is 5+ years old.

Thanks,
Steve

I don't think you'll be able to keep the old stuff on the ipod and still add stuff to the ipod.

I think your only option would be to reset the ipod essentially wiping everything and then load it all back on.

It shouldn't be that hard to reload the ipad from the new PC though. itunes knows what you've purchased based on your user id. And if you ripped the stuff before, you can rip it again if you haven't already transferred it to the new PC.

I'm in the same boat.

If your ipod has everything you need on it as-is look up "Copytrans"- that is a program you can download which allows you to write everything on the ipod to the new PC-

do that, then activate the new PC by authorizing it thru itunes.

When you plug your ipod back to the newly authorized machine it will wipe out the ipod but reinstall what you already put back previously so don't worry it'll work.

I use my Ipod to transfer everything from one machine to the next (back when I had PC's) Mac has a much slicker interface.

rjp

Sweet. Leave it up to PPOT to have pretty much anything and everything covered.

Copytrans is the best solution for this issue. Totally worth it. $20 bucks fixes the issue.

Just remember, once you transfer everything from the ipod to the computer for the 1st time, activate the computer thru itunes, test our library to make sure it all made it OK before you hook the ipod up again-

It'll say it doesn't recognize the ipod and want to overwrite it but all your stuff is in the new machine so it's OK.

WOrks well.

Depending on how much data you are missing I would suggest finding a local drive recovery service for your old hard drive. Have them mount it a portable USB drive enclosure and from there copy over what you need (all your music, pictures, docs, etc...) to the new computer over the USB connection.

Once your music is copied to the new PC install iTunes, setup the library to point to your music (on Win7 defaults to c:/Users/YOUR USER NAME/My Music/) collection, then finally pair the iPod with the new iTunes. New pairing will slick the iPod and then you are free to use it as normal.

This thread prompted me to see about this. I downloaded iTunes and followed the prompts. I'm in and synch'd.

Go google for an app called Sharepod. It's free. It allows you to pull the data off the iPod and drop it anywhere you like.

Apple has this ridiculous setting that prevents data from going from iPod to the PC; iTunes goes PC to iPod only.

Follow Randy's instruction and you'll be fine.

Randy P - great call on Copy Trans. Worked like a charm!