I stuck my iPod Triskal on Guilo (My office PC) today to play my music loud since the other night shift people on the neighboring cubicles weren’t there yet. I opened iTunes and a software update shows up. Now if it’s an iTunes update, I usually ignore it since iTunes is such a big memory hogger that any other update it adds means it hogs more memory (A habit I formed with Ginger, my old laptop. Well, now that I have Aslan, I don’t think of that anymore, hee!). But since it’s an iPod software update, I clicked OK and let the computer do its work.

Later, when people started coming in, I decided to unplug my iPod so I can listen to my music in private. I clicked on Shuffle Songs but it wasn’t working, which made me wonder if Triskal is acting up…so I decided to just go to my current favorite song (Until You by Dave Barnes) and play it from there but…

WHERE DID MY SONGS GO?!

My iPod was completely empty! :( I wondered if I unplugged it prematurely, so I tried plugging it in again. I looked at iTunes and there were all my songs! I unplugged it again…and it’s gone again! ARGH!!!

I was panicking real bad and wondering how will I get through the night shift without my songs. I decided to restore my iPod, but I have to back it up first, so I started dragging the songs out to Guilo’s desktop. Then I did some browsing and some places were no help (seriously), until I got to this entry. And I quote:

Apple has released an iPod software update, version 1.2.2. This update is supposed to have some ‘bug fixes’. How important these fixes are to the enjoyment of your iPod is still undetermined.

Many users, myself included, have experienced an issue after installing the update where all the iPod menus are now blank even though it appears to have been properly synced with iTunes. This renders the iPod completely useless and unplayable.

The problem seems to occur when Windows users with 5th generation iPods install the 1.2.2 update before installing the 7.5 update to iTunes.

To avoid this problem install the iTunes 7.5 update and restart before applying the 1.2.2 update to your iPod.

If you’ve already installed 1.2.2 and are suffering from this problem then update iTunes to the current 7.5, restart, and resynch your iPod.

Argh, what a hassle. I went off to download iTunes 7.5, and then installed it (had trouble with installing QuickTime pa, hmph!), but when it’s finally installed, I plugged Triskal in again, and it worked fine. :) Whew.

Lesson learned: Don’t take iTunes updates forgranted. I’m just happy Guilo is a relatively fast computer that I can run Lotus Notes, MS Word, Firefox, Photoshop and iTunes all at the same time. :)