Entertainment For Lively Minds
The curse of Stimpy
or was it Beany? Anyhow, the soothsayer responsible will know, having forewarned of the inevitability of computer failure often enough. Last week it happened, courtesy, be warned, some nasty spyware in a zipfile from one of those deleted record blog sites, residing in a Sandy & the Strawbs LP I suspect. McAfee turned a blind eye as all went awry, with malware rescuing the day and killing off the invader, but unfortunately not before damage to smooth running had ocurred. Error messages aplenty about initialisation failures and jit-debugging scared the bejasus out of me, but in a calm and caffeine fuelled few days, allowing for time at work, I have system restored (failed) and, hand on heart, system recovered. This message is a tribute to my cack handed patience, interweb, printer and all working again, praise be. BUT my elderly podUtil transfer tool, for i-pod back to comp, is not playing the game and I am too nervous to jump off the deep end and risk losing 2 ipod fulls, one with 19k songs, the other with 3.5k. What is the best tool for this job, mes braves, I am shaking here.......
- More from Retropath2.
- Login or register to post comments
-
Media Widget
is very good. About £16 [gets you 3 licenses which is handy]
& it's cross platform, so good for Macs too - No it isn't! I'm thinking of Tune Aid - which is also good.
Wha?
Not me (honest injun). I'm a pure Spotify man me. In the words of Runt Todgergrin, I saw the light.
Hope there is no viruseses in my streaming beer website...
A few
yeasts, perhaps. Much better for you.
I am belatedly so sure it was Stimpy
that I have been roundly coming to Frys defence and berating him about his great age and how out of touch he was with "the kids" in '74. (Even I am not going to say "ver kids", cos I don't really understand it).
Why should he be dissed? Only in the same way piano players are traditionally shot, for playing the tunes of another. He warned us all about armageddon and it duly came a'calling on me.
P.S. Media Widget's great, thanks to both Chasandmorph!
We like to help when we can.
I did warn you Retro...
I warned you and you ignored my warnings. My curse therefore rained down upon you to learn you of the foolishness of ignoring my warnings.
Hope you got everything back OK :-)
NOW TAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR MUSIC... NOW... NOT AFTER THAT COFFEE... DO IT NOW...
and remember
a back up kept in the same place is just a copy
So far so good, thanks......
But it takes feckin ages to media widget near 20 k songs off an i-pod, as it is too big to do in one go.........
I am now looking at the skies to see if your flash flood storm warning rings true fore my stash of vinyl in the garage........
(Places Pentangle lp on turntable)..
..dunno mate.
More tips, please
Media widget has done it's job on one i-pod and part of the other, but here's the rub, at 8.5k songs now on i-tunes, media widget is telling me there is insufficient disk space to download the further 15k songs on i-pod 2, despite there previously, pre-meltdown, being lashings of room for all. What's wrong? Is it because the old files are still on the hard drive, albeit inaccessible? Is it because media widget lifts out the songs into temporay files before condensing thenm again, and my system cannot hold the size thereof? If so, can I delete these (and how) without losing what is already transferred into i-tunes? struggling here, guys, being anything other than a learn by error and experience sort of tecchie, i.e. not much at all......
Unless
you completely wiped your hard drive when fixing the initial problem, it would appear that all the original content of iTunes is still present. Somewhere. If you did wipe the hard drive then it's a bit of a strange one. I have three problems. 1 This is tricky without all the information. 2. you're on a pc and I'm more familiar with Mac's. 3. I'm like yourself, a pick it up as you go techie.
But, the good thing is that you still have the songs, so it's all a matter of time before it's fixed and I'm sure someone here can be more help than I am!
Try Mediamonkey
It's free but will sniff out all your music files on your hard drive. It will then list them all including the hard drive file location.
Re Mediamonkey
Thanks Lee, I found 'em all, now the problem seems to be the seeming impossibility of moving 'em back to the active i-tunes.........
Assuming
they are all in one folder, just drag the folder into the iTunes window (you know, the place in itunes where your songs should be when itunes is launched, the main library window) and they will re-import themselves. (will take a while, but should do it)
Careful with that axe, Retro
I hate feckin computers.....
I have found how to transfer the file and, lo and behold, they are all exclamation marked as unable to find.....
I'm going to delete the lot, delete i tunes and start again. I still have the 2 full pods.
A suggestion
Copy it all off the iPods
Put the tracks in a known location on your machine (say, Retro Music)
Take an empty iTunes
Set iTunes to not 'organise my iTunes library"
Do an 'Add to library' for the 'Retro Music' folder
Then take a backup of Retro Music :-)
Try using Mediamonkey to tidy up
Look for duplicates etc in the files to edit folder on the left hand side. You may have 2 copies of each, one orphaned from itunes if the files have moved (the ones with !) and the original file may be somewhere else.
I'm crossing my fingers.
I have mediamonkeyed everything and anything and thus got them all in one place. Then corralled anything with i-tunes in it's file name in the same pen. Then I shot them down.
I have now re-installed i-tunes and it is filling up nicely from the 80 GB as we write, the one the computer claimed to be too full with hidden booty earlier on to cope with.
Interestingly, when I was committing mp4icide, the 'monkey suggested I had 35k songs not the 23k I believed I had had, as every dodgy deleted track I had ever downloaded was still lurking in the undergrowth, along with 2000 odd sounds from an Age of Empires demo, long since thought sent to Coventry....
The rule in our house is
iTunes for playing. Mediamonkey for keeping house in order (and sleeve art).
Happy happy happy
As is Mrs Path, as Mr Crazy has left the house, and all my songs are back safe and sound. Thanks a shedload Chasandmorph and Lee, for my new buddies Media Widget and mediamonkey. And the prophet of doom, of course, himself, the Stimpmeister.
and have you backed everything up yet?
Perhaps to an external USB/Firewire hard disk? They cost naught but a few quid these days; compare that to the time and anguish you've spent on recovering them all from the various iPods.
(I know, I know but I'm not going to shut up about it. It's for your own good!)
Now....do as stimpy told you.....
...buy a pack of 20 DVD-R blanks and make a back up of all your tunes.
Simply go into Nero and make Data DVD.
Then, even if your pc or your iPod dies, you'll still have the tunes.
Do this
and store them at a trust worthy relatives.
I have all the songs on discs already
vinyl or compact, the latter being either as bought or a huge box of of CDRs for downloaded music.
The i-pods are my back up until I go to costco tomorrow for an external hard drive.
Thanks for caring.....(!?)
(The Nero wheeze sound good, tho' and less time consuming if I am ever needing to put them back again)