Hi. My sister got a IPOD nano for christmas. She is home from college and her computer is still at college. She was going to try to put it on my parent's computer so she can at least use it till she goes back. Installing itunes it told me (I was setting it up for her) to connect the ipod to the machine to format. The format would almost get done then it would say there was a connection error. (There is Dell quality for you.) You try again and get the same scenario. I have gtkpod on my computer from when i was going to get a shuffle. I want to try it on my computer to 1.) make sure the ipod isn't defective before she goes back to school (Her computer is the same one as my parents) 2.) Show that it can work with linux as a point to try to get my parents to switch (My mom is thinking of getting one) 3.) Im a technophile and want to touch it. lol. My questions are this.
1. if i use it on linux will that create problems for using it on windows? (I don't think it would but curious)
2. Obviously it hasn't been formatted properly. Can i use gtkpod to format it for windows? (Then maybe i can just skip that part in the itunes installer)

thanks for any replies in advance. I appreciate it.

Well well.. It should be prompted for format only if it was formatted for mac before.. Could also be if they detect that its corrupted in some way. You can format it on linux but its not a walk in the park since you need to re-insert the firmware after that, and its prolly the firmware thats shitty there.. So, doing a full restore to it on a mac or even windows is a better idea to fix it.

After that, gtkpod can take over on linux and use it just fine.. (if its mac formatted, the kernel must have HFS+ support, if win formatted fat32 support will be enough) You could also try Yamipod on windows or mac, its better imho, but on linux I couldnt get it to work.. /:

Ah, now I underrstood it, so its the first format, right? Ooo.. Yeah, then it could be defective.. But again, a full restore might work instead of format.

yeah it is the first format. What do you mean by a full restore? Should my parents possiby return it? I'll have to look around on the mac website later to see what they say.

If you read the manual youd know.. (; You can download an exe off apple that will rewrite the whole software for the ipod. Thats what I meant. If that doesn't work, then its back to the shop prolly, yeah.. /:

what's your problem with dell?, blaming it all on dell?