Windows crashes when trying to sync photos

Question

I'm a new Nano user and I finally got iTunes through my firewall, playing music, and synching with my Nano. I can load my songs and make playlists. So far, so good.
Today I've been trying to sync up to load pictures, but every time I do, Windows crashes. I've tried searching the support articles and couldn't find this issue before. I've been trying to sync it to a particular file with a select group of pictures: I've tried using different file and subfile locations and I've tried changing the size or number of the photos....but it still happens. Every time my Nano syncs with iTunes to include a photo sync, all of Windows crashes.
Is there something about the photo files (jpeg) that I should know or change? They're all about 300K and all have text names (not digits or symbols).
Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

hi Pegasus!
gosh, but this is a weird complex of symptoms that you're getting. i've actually seen then all before individually, just not in a clump together like this.
this will be a long post. i'm going to start with troubleshooting directly related with with the blue screen, and then after that i'll dwell on the itunes-launch-failures/photosyncing-relation angles.
0x0000001 (0x0000008, 0x0000008, 0x0000000, 0xBFF55036)
Driver IRQLNOT_LESS_OREQUAL
that can be a fiddly one to troubleshoot. i haven't seen any common denominators in itunes/ipod contexts with it.
(1) let's try to get the malware possibilities off the table. (i'm usually more worried about that with a 0x0000050, but you're getting a weird bunch of symptoms.) download fresh definitions and run vigorous virus and spyware scans. if your security software providers offer them, run some online scans as well. (they can sometimes pick up an infection even if the security software on the PC has been compromised.)
(2) have a check through your Device Manager (right-click "My Computer", select "Manage", click "Device Manager") to check to see if there are any warning/alert messages showing up next to any of your Devices.
(3) have a look through the MS Knowledge base to see if you can find any reported causes of the IRQL_... that look like they might be relevant to your box. sorry, there's a whole bunch of different things to sift through over there:
search on Driver IRQLNOT_LESS_OREQUAL
(4) let's also capture a minidump of the crash and send it to the Discussions Hosts, so they can throw it over the fence to the Apple engineers for a look.
To set up your machine to capture a minidump, right click on "My Computer", select "Properties", select the "Advanced" tab, select the "Startup and Recovery" Settings button, select "small memory dump" from the popup. When it crashes, look for the MiniDump file. It's usually in the folder "C:\WINDOWS\Minidump" and is called something like Mini<number>-<number>.dmp.
And then send it to a Discussions Host. It doesn't hurt to put the URL to this discussion thread, so that whoever gets it has some context. Also give as much information about the context of the crash (in the email) as you can.
itunes-not-launching/photosyncing
security software on the PC can be implicated with both of these ... i just haven't seen it associated with both sorts of symptoms at the same time.
Norton Internet Security 2005 is a common cause of error-message-free itunes launch failures, and i have seen it implicated in some odd syncing problems (just not with a BSOD on photosync.)
McAfee is sometimes implicated with odd problems with photosyncing (but not typically with the itunes error-message-free launch failures).
so let's try an experiment. if you switch your security software off prior to an attempt at a photosync, do you still get the blue screen?
love, b