Does anyone know what driver I need to download for my shuffle to work?

Question

I posted my problem previously in "My shuffle must have transcended the time-space continuum!"
In the meantime, I called Apple Care. Great job, very polite and helpful. Thank you Apple!!
Together the agent and I discovered that my Toshiba laptop does not have the drivers needed in order for the ipod to be recognized. Without said driver, I won't be able to use my ipod at all. She said that even with the article that Apple Support has about Toshiba laptops and ipod, that there are still kinks in it.
So, my question is this...do any of you people out there who are more computer literate than I am know what I should look for to download? The Apple agent didn't know what specific driver I should look for. If anyone knows, please help!
In the meantime, I'm going to peruse Toshiba's website and see if I can find anything.

Answer 1

I had the same suggestion given to me by Apple... I went to my USB card manufacturer website (In my case, VIA Communications) and got some info on their forum.
The most I can understand right now (although I haven't solved my own iPod problem) is that first, you should try updating drivers by right-clicking everything individually in the Device Manager under the "USB" section, and clicking on "Update Driver." Also, make sure you have Windows Service Pack 2, and try updating all of your drivers by going to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ . The Toshiba website might have a driver update or a patch, also... I'd look around, anyway.
I updated my drivers (which didn't work), and then I came across a paragraph on VIA's website that says:
"Through feedback in the forums and hundreds of emails over the years, we know that technical support hot-lines for many peripheral (as in printer/scanner/camera etc) manufacturers, tell their customers to "update the drivers" or "update the controller". ... The controller cannot be updated without updating your motherboard to a motherboard that has a later revision controller. ... This is inbuilt and cannot be updated. The advice you received to update the driver or controller, probably means that they recommend that you update the VIA chipset or platform drivers. ... it may well be that the peripheral USB device you want to install is too new for your motherboard and therefore not compatible."
Basically, this means that if it doesn't work after the driver update, it may not be a driver issue, but a power issue.
I've been told (not by Apple) to try buying an external USB hub that plugs into the wall. I haven't yet, but as soon as I do, I'll post whether or not it works, lol. For other people, an internal USB2.0 PCI card worked, but I'm not sure if laptops work with them...
Hope you (and I, and everyone) get it figured out!