I have been fighting with my iPod almost all afternoon. I plugged it into my Vista laptop, and I knew it would delete all the songs on it. Which was not a problem because not that hard to sync. Boy was I wrong. It refused to do it. And then when it FINALLY told me it was syncing it was taking forever so I left it to do it's thing and went out. I came home just to read this error message:

The iPod "Whisper's iPod" could not be synced. The disc could not be read from or written to

Can anybody PLEASE tell me what is wrong with it? I have even tried restoring it back to factory settings. I am getting rather annoyed. I need my baby. I love my music too much. Please rescue me somebody, anybody!

your ipod is broken, go put it in a dumpster and buy a zune. youll be happy you did...

That's Vista for you. It sucks.

I've been trying to sync my chocolate phone all day, same headache, no answers, sorry.

NEVER!!!! My iPod is my baby. We do not take Mac products away from Whisper it makes Whisper VERY upset.

did u try repluging your ipod back onto the charger and put the plug in the computer?

it coulda been taking forever if your itunes was multitasking i know that slows it down bigtime if thats not the cause then yea sumthin might be wrong with your ipod

that or your just one more in the millions of 'satisfied' customers trying to survive with vista

Is it really just Vista that is causing me this headache? And if so is there away to burn iTunes onto a disc and load it to my desktop? As I do not have internet on my desktop, but it does have XP.

I charge it using my computer. And yes I have disconected and recontected quiet a few times.

I have no idea what is wrong with your iPod; can you mount it as a mass storage device? To see the files/directories on it using your file browser? If so, you can put rockbox on it, copy your music over using your file browser, and play your music using rockbox.

Its great because you -never- have to mess with the annoying iTunes and all the 'helpful' things it tries to do for you when it syncs. Plus, rockbox brings some pda-type functionality to your ipod.

No, unfortunitly itunes has to be used in order to put songs onto it. I am almost tears here. I do not have an extra $200 to go out and replace it. MAN this sucks!

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1207

OK, ignore this board. I just unplugged it and replugged it back in before I threw the darn thing and it started instantly syncing properly. Sorry to bother you guys.

"No, unfortunitly itunes has to be used in order to put songs onto it."

This solution may not appeal to you at all (for a variety of good reasons!), but for anyone else who is having the same problem and reading this thread:

You don't need iTunes enjoy music on most iPods. (Unless you happen to own a few particular models). Most iPod models will run an alternative firmware called "Rockbox" which allows the user to use access the file system on the iPod without Apples restrictions. Music can be played directly off the hard drive, without being limited to those songs which iTunes has place on the drive.