Solved: New iPod nano 8g not seen in My Computer/iTunes after Apple Support

Question

I received this iPod as a Christmas gift and it has taken months to get it working but I am happy to say I finally did. I wanted to post what I did to solve the problem in case anyone else is having the same issue.
Background Information:
- Windows XP operating system (I had to upgrade to SP 2 just for this iPod)
- Computer works fine with an older iPod nano
- New iPod nano would simply bring up the "Install Hardware Wizard" and always resulted in "Cannot Install Hardware"
- Nothing would show up in My Computer
- iPod would say "Connected, Eject before disconnecting" when it was connected
- Under "Services" iPod service was running & Started
- Under "Device Manager" iPod showed up under "Other Devices" with an exclamation/question mark for "iPod" (note: this did not show up under USB controllers)
What I Have Tried That Didn't Work:
- Downloading new iTunes. I did this a few times and ended up with 7.6.1.9
- Uninstall and reinstall iTunes and Quicktime
- Tried Install Hardware Wizard option to search for drivers in c:\WINNT\inf (or c:\windows\inf if that's what you have)
- Restarted computer several times and tried creating a new user in Windows XP
- Tried going to "Right-click-My Computer"-"Manage"-"Device Manager" and uninstalled any instance of iPod (under "Other Devices") and tried refreshing / re-installing
- Tried stopping and restarting the iPod service in "Services"
- Tried restarting iPod, resetting it, all those 5 R's and other Apple support docs online
- Tried finding answers in forums
- Finally today I spent a few hours on the phone with Apple Support, and after repeating everything in their self-help documents online, and it still didn't work, they said "Call Microsoft and tell them you have a driver issue" and that my new iPod needed some additional driver (which is why old iPod works but not new)
So that's where I left off this afternoon. I think I've seen people who haven't had much luck getting Microsoft support to help with iPod issues, so I continued searching online. I tried updating my Video driver from the Gateway.com website and that didn't work.
On the microsoft.com website, the best I could find was a registry change which told me to delete registry keys for UpperFilters and LowerFilters, which I didn't even have so I couldn't try.
Finally, here is the solution to what worked:
I searched for iPod - specific drivers, and on some random help forum - http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/43267.html
You'll see they mention "usbstor.inf" which needs to be in c:\winnt\inf (or c:\windows\inf). I checked my computer and it was missing. Luckily, it was there on my work laptop which was also recently upgraded to Windows XP so I e-mailed it to myself (glad I didn't have to trust some one online).
I also followed his directions to add "usbstor.sys" from c:\winnt\servicepack files\i386\ to c:\winnt\system32\drivers.
Lastly, I saw some other usb*.inf and usb*.pnf files on my laptop so I decided what-the-heck, I'll grab them all since I only had usbvideo.inf, and thus I extracted the following into my c:\winnt\inf directory: usb.inf, usb.pnf, usbport.inf, usbport.pnf, usbprint.pnf, usbprint.inf, usbstor.pnf, usbtor.inf.
I restarted my computer and right away my iPod magically appeared in MyComputer and when I opened iTunes, it was also successfully there. Funny thing is, Windows Install Hardware Wizard popped up and I pointed it to that directory -- guess what, it didn't work. Apparently that doesn't matter. Every time I plug in my iPod now, I will just skip the "Install New Hardware Wizard" and go straight to iTunes.
I know this was lengthy but I thought I could save some one else hours of checking around--- just go look in your "inf" directory and make sure you have the usbstor.inf file!
Good luck!!!!

Answer 1

Take a look at this link, http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1410