I can't believe I fixed my Shuffle!

Question

After suffering all the problems with the latest version of the firmware/drivers and iTunes updates, I had a shuffle that couldn't be synced, couldn't be recognized, and couldn't play. Guess what? I fixed it and it now works better than ever, with vastly improved sound quality when used with my Transpod FM transmitter in the car.
First step HAS to be this one. There is a bug in the software that assumes the Shuffle is E:\ drive. You have to change the drive letter assignment in Control Panel, the following from Microsoft Help:
How to assign a drive letter
To assign a drive letter to a drive, a partition, or a volume, follow these steps:
1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
Note If you do not see Performance and Maintenance, go to step 3. Performance and Maintenance appears in Control Panel only if you use Category view. If you use Classic view, Performance and Maintenance does not appear.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Add.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
7. Click OK.
The drive letter is assigned to the drive, to the partition, or to the volume that you specified, and then that drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.
How to change a drive letter
To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps: 1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Change.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.
The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.
I chose M: due to the built in flash card drive on my laptop eating up drive letters. At one point I even tried formatting it from Windows as a flash drive, which may turn out to be a critical step for some of you. This gets Windows to recognize the Shuffle and where it is. Suddenly Itunes could find it, but couldn't truly access it for me after this fix.
If you are like me, you will have to use the updater from the current version of the drivers, use restore, not update. If that fails, uninstall the iPod drivers and reboot the computer, then install them again. You may have to reboot again, then plug in the Shuffle and update it. Mine was so messed up it had to be reformatted during one of the tries.
Eventually the current version took and to my shock iTunes was able to automatically transfer music again. I tested it and it once again could play music, no more alternating green and orange lights. Currently using the latest versions of iTunes & iPod software now.
Hopefully this will help some of you fix your problem, I have to warn you it took me some hours of trial and error (mostly error) one evening. So be patient and it can be worked out. Still, there is no excuse for this from Apple.

Answer 1

Try using your home computer. First off, make sure iTunes is not running in the background, then see if Windows recognizes the Shuffle as a USB drive. Make sure the Shuffle is turned off and that you use the same USB port that you originally installed it to. If you can get Windows to recognize it as a drive, go to My Computer and right click on the Shuttle drive. I'm assuming you've already assigned it a letter, such as M: in the steps I outlined above. You should be able to format it there.
Always make sure to use the icon in the system tray to safely unplug the Shuffle (or any USB storage device) before removing it. I'd also suggest not using the Shuffle as a jump drive, there are cheaper and more capacious ones out there these days and it would reduce the likely hood of software getting confused by the split.
If you can get the thing formatted in Windows, you will be able to get it reformatted with latest update. Oh and you might want to get the standalone Quicktime installer and run that first before mucking around with iTunes 6. There was a corrupted install involved there, going to check out the new revision of iTunes that just rolled out today.