Freezing and resetting solution, playlists the culprit, take a look Apple

Question

Hi there, I've had a major issue with my 160gb ipod classic from day 1.
I've got a 140g music library on my PC and I've not been able to sync it to the ipod because of freezing and resetting problems.. until today.
When I first tried to sync my whole music library the ipod crashed as soon as I disconnected it. I had to restore the ipod and soon learned to sync my music in 10gb chunks. Only trouble was the ipod would work fine as long as I only synced 70-80gb of music, which is half the ipod's capacity. If I tried to add any more music the ipod would eventually go into the freezing and resetting loop and I'd have to restore it and start again.
I know other users on here have had similar problems. Firmware 1.1 and itunes 7.6 did not fix the issue for me. I know that my mp3 files are not the problem because if I split my music library into two 70gb chunks I could sync either chunk without problems, it was only when I tried to sync them all...
Through lots of trial and error, such as reinstalling OS, reinstalling itunes, rebuilding library, scanning mp3 files for errors I have eventually found out what was causing my problem.
I have 100s of pretty complex smart playlists, they are heavily nested and dependant on other playlists. I've got them all organised into folders for easier navigating. This was one of the reasons I couldn't wait for the ipod classic to come out because my playlist folders would at last be recognised on the ipod. I recently added a pretty big playlist tree for playing songs from a given year and noticed that itunes got even more sluggish than usual!
I looked at my library file and it had grown to nearly 100mb. As an experiment I backed up my library file first than deleted all of my playlists. The size of the library file reduced to 34mb. I decided to try and sync more music onto my ipod without the playlists... and would you believe it I've been able to sync my whole music libary to my ipod for the first time - no freezing and no resetting!
I would hazard a guess that the ipod classic firmware currently has an issue syncing lots of complex, nested playlists. I've fed this back to apple and hope they can come up with a solution. I hope it's not an issue related to the reduced size of the RAM in the new ipods, otherwise there will never be a solution!
As it stands I'm gonna really simplify my playlists and keep my fingers crossed. I love playlists, they're a massive part of the whole ipod experience for me so scaling them back will be a real trade off but if it stops the resetting problems I'll have to do it. This is working for me so far so good luck to everyone else who has been having similar problems.
Message was edited by: DamenQ

Answer 1

DamenQ
thank you so much for this information. I can not tell you, how helpful your posting is.
I had exactly the same problem, and I did follow your instructions - and for the first time in almost 3 month (and after hours and hours spent on my computer to try to resolve this problem), I am able to utilize the full capacity of my 160 GB iPod Classic.
It is very unfortunate, that I am currently not able to utilize my Folders and Playlists (just like you, I have hundreds of them which are a huge part of the iPod Experience), but at one point, my iPod was no longer able to start up and got stuck in a 're-boot' loop. After removing my most complex smart playlists, the problem disappeared (I did not remove them from iTunes, but I no longer synch them to my iPod).
So again, thanks for posting this information, and thanks for contacting Apple. I really hope, that this issue will be resolved in the next Firmware release.
FYI for anybody else who might read this post : Using the Tinker Tool (free download) makes it very easy to monitor/view the hidden files on your iPod.