I don’t usually post things as this but Holy Crap…. it made me want to puke after looking at it for 5 seconds. Everyone knows I hate MySpace in the first place and this is just one prime example why. *bleh*

http://www.myspace.com/soybuddha

Speaking of bad web design… check out these uglies. What the hell is wrong with people?

*Warning: Some of these might kill your browser*

http://jeffreydavidmorris.com/
http://www.rogerart.com/
http://www.booksareus.org/
http://www.thagan.com/
http://timecube.com/
http://rat-hunter.com/

A couple of days ago my iPod Nano sh!t the bed after i did the 3-23 update to software version 1.1.1. The symptoms were:

1) Without being connected to my computer seems to work normally.
2) After connecting to computer via supplied USB cable to my bad-a$$ machine using Windows XP Pro funny things happened like:

a) iPod display stuck in “Do Not Disconnect”
b) Trying to bring up iTunes or 3-23 Updater locks up both programs sometimes even locks up certain portions of Windows. *was really scratching my head over this one*
c) Cannot safely disconnect via tray icon

For a couple of days i just threw it aside and told myself I’d just deal with it later. Today the itch started. So I played with it a little more for a couple of hours but didn’t make any head way. I then turned to Apple Support but nothing on their website listed any problems with their updater. Then i went over to the iPod Nano forum on the Apple website. Seems posts were coming in left and right as I read through them. One guy seemed to have a fix but when I tried it, it didn’t work. It involved downloading the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. I had problems downloading it at first because HP no longer hosted it on their website but I found it in another thread in the Apple forums. I played around with the tool somemore but it kept locking up on me. So finally I tried just restarting my computer and disconnecting my iPod Nano before it restarted. Ran the tool without the iPod connected so it would display the format screen and then connected the iPod. It took maybe 30 seconds for the tool to correctly recognize the iPod but when it did I full formatted in FAT32 and everything else went smooth. So I’m just going to share this little knowledge that I’ve attained in case someone else runs into this problem.

Here are the correct steps (must do in this order):

1) Download and install HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
2) Make sure iPod Nano is disconnected
3) Restart computer
4) After logged back into desktop you’ll need to do one of 2 things

a) If you “do not” have iTunes installed then continue on to step 5
b) If you “do” have iTunes installed then you’ll need to disable a couple of services that will constantly look for your iPod connection. Bring up your task manager by hitting (CTRL+ALT+DLT). Find “iPodService.exe” & “iTunesHelper.exe” and disable them by right clicking on the processes one at a time and clicking “End Process.”

5) Bring up HP Formatter Tool
6) When format window is up plug iPod Nano using supplied USB cable
7) Give both your computer and HP Formatter Tool some time to recognize your iPod Nano
Now select format type of FAT32
9) Click Format (it’s better to not do a quick format so stick with default of full format)
10) After pop-up window appears notifying you that format is complete, close HP Formatter Tool
11) Bring up iPod Updater 3-23 (download and install from Apple site if haven’t yet)
12) Do full restore
13) The restore should have automatically updated your software but if it hasn’t then run update.
14) Everything should be fully operational now. If for some reason your iPod Nano or computer locked up some where in the listed steps then start over with Step 2.

Hope this helps some unfortunate iPod Nano user out there and Apple really needs to post something about this before it becomes a big deal.

Update: Recently Apple pushed out another updater so make sure you have the iPod 6-28 Updater.

Update: Comments are closed because of the release of iTunes 7 and new updater. Thanks.

had myself falling out of my chair laughing after watching the new Mac TV ads. there are 6 of them and everyone should check them out. “Restarting” is my favorite.

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