Ricky Says

Question: My iPod has totally stopped working. It won't charge when plugged into the computer and won't turn on at all. Could it be a battery issue? As far as iTunes goes, how can I transfer my entire library over from our old computer to our new computer? I've tried copying and pasting and I installed the iTunes from the disk but my library is still empty? Thanks - Jean

Answer: Jean, you're not alone with the whole iPod freezing situation. I just bought my wife an iPod nano for Valentine's Day, and two days later it completely froze up. The kids had been playing with it, and I think they just got a little crazy with all the buttons.

Resetting a Frozen iPod

The trick for resetting a frozen iPod is to press the Menu and center button at the same time and hold them for about 6 seconds. You should see the Apple icon and your iPod should restart. Give that a try and let me know if it does the trick. If it doesn't work, then I recommend taking your iPod into an Apple store where they can check if the battery is fried.

Copying Music from an Old Computer to a New Computer

As for copying your music from your old computer to your new computer, look in your My Documents folder and you'll see a My Music subfolder. iTunes stores it's music under My Music --> iTunes --> iTunes Music. That's the folder you'll need to copy to your new computer, and for Windows Vista you'll paste it into your C:\Users\Jean\Documents\My Music\iTunes\ folder (assuming you have a user account created named Jean).

iTunes should recognize the music automatically, but if it doesn't then you can use the File --> Add Folder to Library menu in iTunes to load the new folder into iTunes.

If you have several albums worth of songs, then you'll want to transfer these music files to an external hard drive, and then copy those files from the external hard drive to the new computer. There'll probably be too many files to copy to a USB jump drive or even a DVD (especially if your iPod mini was full).

Copying Music from an iPod to Another Computer

Many people also find that they have music on their iPod that they don't have in their iTunes library. This can happen if you downloaded music from your work machine onto your iPod that you don't have on your home machine. In my case, I had lots of music on my iPod that were not on my wife's laptop, that she wanted to have on her new iPod.

For this I use a program called iPod 2 iTunes, that lets you upload files directly from your iPod to any computer running iTunes. You can't do this with iTunes alone - iTunes only lets you download to your iPod, whereas iPod 2 iTunes lets you copy from your iPod to iTunes.

I wrote a separate article covering how to upload files directly from your iPod to iTunes, and it shows screenshots and even a flash demo of the program in action.

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