FIX: Ipod cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (-48)

Question

Hey everybody,
I just wanted to share with you a solution that my friend and I have used to eliminate the "iPod cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (-48)" error. I have a iPod Photo 60 gig that has not had this error before....until 3 days ago. I tried to drop a few songs onto my iPod and it gave me this error. After talking with my friend, I realized that a few things had happened that I didn't think were variables at first. For one thing, I had just updated my iTunes to version 7.4.1.2. That same day, I also had a new update to Windows XP sp2. When I restarted my computer (to complete my iTunes update), both install were now active.
I tried to add new songs to my iPod and I kept getting this Cannot Sync error. The songs would get onto my iPod and I could play them from the iPod via iTunes. Once I disconnected my iPod and tried to play them, the songs were gone. iTunes was failing to save the songs on the iPod.
Resolution: I connected my iPod to a 3rd party interface (to replace iTunes) and it worked. The interface is called Yamipod and this is where you get it from:
http://www.yamipod.com/main/modules/downloads/
When I connected it to my iPod, it identified some bad file and corrected (or replaced) it with a good file. I added songs via Yamipod and they were correctly synced to my iPod. And the best part is, after I used Yamipod my iTunes was now working correctly. I told my friend at work to try this out and it worked for her too. She mentioned that she used Yamipod and then updated her version of Quicktime before everything started working.
All I have to say is that the latest release of iTunes was probably incompatible with Windos XP and some file was corrupted. Like iTunes, Yamipod probably needed this file to sync correctly...so it just overwrote the file, compared to iTunes, which just compained about being broken.
One more thing, Yamipod is a free tool that you can use to extrasct songs from your iPod to your computer. That is the main reason why I use it, but now I realise it's more stable than iTunes too!
Good luck out there, it ***** to have an iPod that you can't add songs to.
Italian.Dude3

Answer 1

First off, have you tried these five iPod troubleshooting steps?:
The Five Rs
If you have, then let's move onto a few general possible troubleshooting fixes, since the solution to a -48 error on a PC is somewhat unknown or various.
See if assigning your iPod a different drive letter helps, following the instructions from this article:
Windows confuses iPod with network drive or hard drive
Try reformatting your iPod to FAT32, through your computer. Then, we'll restore it in iTunes afterward. To do that, see these steps:
1 - Connect your iPod to your computer.
2 - When iTunes has finished syncing with your iPod, open "My Computer".
3 - Right-click on your iPod, and click on "Format". (If your iPod is not showing in My Computer, make sure that disk use is enabled in iTunes).
4 - Here, verify that your formatting settings are "Default", with the format type set for FAT32. Also, make sure that "Quick Scan" is not selected.
5 - Then, click on "OK" to begin the formatting process.
6 - When this is complete (it might take a while), make sure to restore your iPod in iTunes again, so as to properly reload the firmware back onto it again.
Finally, this could be caused by digital signing issues on your computer. See the "Solution 1" section of this article for help regarding that possible cause:
iTunes displays a -50 error when syncing iPod
Any success with any of those things, or do you still have the error?
-Kylene