iPod Shuffle Broken straight out the box!

OK. I've worked it out, but I've no idea wtf to do now and Apple's tech support is truly awful.

For some reason, iTunes disconnects the iPod seconds after I plug it in. It started doing this with my iPod video too, although because of the nature of how that syncs it is fine.

I need to prevent iTunes from disconnecting it prematurely, because the millisecond I plug it in it goes "iPod update is complete, ready to disconnect."
 
I got a new shuffle last week. Had exactly the same problem I think. Was the error message:

"The iPod "IPOD" cannot be updated. The disk could not be read or written to"

"The iPod "IPOD" cannot be updated. An unknown error occurred. (-50)"

I found this solution on the Apple forums and now it works fine. It may or may not work for you.

) Disconnect the iPod from the computer.
2) Go to "start> right click my computer> manage> services and applications> services>
3) Click iPod service> click stop service."
4) Connect the ipod and it should show up in my computer.
5) Format it so all content is gone. (ohno: right click, select format, uncheck "quick format" and click OK - should take just a couple seconds to format)
6) Go back to "start> right click my computer>
manage> services and applications> services> click iPod service> click Start service. This should have the service running again.
7) Open iTunes and connect the shuffle. When it says to automatically fill it (the window that pops up) dont unclick it, proceed so the shuffle autofills. Before it stops autofilling, quickly go to the settings tab. Then, scroll down to where it says "enable disk use" and check the box, then hit apply. Don't worry about the slider position for disk space, mine has worked with this all the way to the left with 0 meg for disk use.
8) Done.
 
Hi,

That's pretty much exactly what I did. I figured out that I had to somehow stop iTunes from automatically disconnecting the shuffle, and the only way to do that was to enable disk use. Although you can't do that unless the iPod is plugged in, so I had to format it so iTunes would think it is brand new. Thanks though.

Worryingly however, that is two people who have had the same problem. You and I are probably quite computer literate and thus we managed to figure it out, but wtf is a normal consumer supposed to do. Apple don't acknowledge this problem on their website either.

Apple better release an update otherwise a lot of shuffles are going back on the shelves. I've just returned a perfectly OK shuffle this morning because of the cretins who programme iTunes.
 
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