[Davie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kloan Oh right, I forgot about the dock connector.. Is this a 4th gen? Because 3rd gen comes with that adapter.. did they stop including them in the packaging?

Yeah, the person at the Apple store said they had discontinued that for some reason.

 

[TWIFOSP]

Yea Dell's home support really needs adjustment.

Yea I'd laugh at what they told you too, that's ludacris. But their goal is to get you off the phone since they don't support ipods. Honestly, it's not really Dell's fault if other USB devices work on that port. But those answers are weaksauce.

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?...9&k=R63658.exe

I found that, which is supposed to address a USB windows XP problem specific to your series of notebooks.

I'm skeptical of it working, since part of your issue starts to happen during POST, but give it a shot.

Do you have a powered USB hub you can hook the iPod up to, and then the the hub to your laptop? The dell rep did have some degree of merit by saying the problem could be power related. I have a Dell Latitude D510 with windows XP, and it's somewhat similar to your 5100. Same chipset if I'm not mistaken. I'll try my 4g ipod on it tonight and let you know if I have problems. If I run into similar issues, I also have a usb powered hub I can use to test that feature.

I'd like to know more about when the status bar freezes during boot up. Does it happen with the dell logo on the screen or the windows XP logo? How far does the status bar get?

Do you have any other external devices hooked up when it freezes? Do you have access to another ipod you could try? It could also be the iPod and not the laptop. It could even be a faulty cable. Cables can easily cause shorts. Try booting the machine with the cable in the USB port, but the iPod not hooked up to the cable. If it still freezes, you have a bad cable.

Keep trying and posting, I bet we can knock this out.

I'm not advocating you do this, but if you exhuast all other options and your Dell is still under warranty, you could always claim that NO usb devices work on it, and try and get the motherboard replaced under warranty. Again, not advocating it, but at least it would absolve the laptop from fault.

 

[AuroraProject]

I'm sorry you are still having problems with this, have you tried disabling the USB in the boot sequence as mentioned earlier in the thread?

 

[fr4c]

no problems with my iPod. worked like a charm with my XP rig.

 

[Davie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject I'm sorry you are still having problems with this, have you tried disabling the USB in the boot sequence as mentioned earlier in the thread?

AuroraProject,

No, I thought I'd try to take care of the underlying issue first. That ended up taking so long that I had to give it up and go to work. But I'm going to look into the boot sequence this evening or tomorrow AM. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Davie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject I'm sorry you are still having problems with this, have you tried disabling the USB in the boot sequence as mentioned earlier in the thread?

AuroraProject,

I just tried this and unfortunately it made no difference.

TWIFOSP,

It freezes on the initial screen with the Dell logo at about 80% of the progress bar.

Regarding the various things you suggested to try, I've attached the ipod both directly to the computer and through a powered hub. I've also tried attaching it directly to the computer, removing all other USB devices and booting that way. No difference.

I'll try the cable only and see what happens.

 

[Davie]

I tried it with the cable only and the computer booted up fine.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point. I decided to try the ipod because I wanted a player that wouldn't give me the hassles that my Karma did. Obviously that didn't work out. On the other hand, in a way this is kind of a non-problem because if I make sure to disconnect the ipod before booting then it won't happen. Like the guy who went to the doctor and said it hurts when I raise my arm like this, and the doctor said "well stop doing it then." On the other hand, that answer doesn't seem completely reassuring, and from a certain angle it seems preferable to have a Karma that may break on it's own but won't interfere with my computer. I could also just use the ipod with firewire though it annoys me greatly that I'd have to mail order for the appropriate 6- to 4-pin adapter or drop another chunk of cash for a PCMCIA firewire card.

Can anyone who knows more about computers tell me whether I'm making too big a deal of this? It sets off alarm bells for me if my computer can barely start the boot sequence with this thing attached, but like I said above it is a problem that I could avoid and ignore.

 

[TWIFOSP]

I know quite a bit about computers, but it's hard to troubleshoot something like this on a forum.

In fact, I used to do tech support for dell (servers) many moons ago (back when it was still good and still in the US)

What you're experiencing is a no post situation. For some reason or another, during the post process, the system is hanging. There might be some kind of irq conflict as the bios attempts to resolve the device. Either way, from what you've told me, the system posting to the point where it gets video and starts to allocate devices, but fails to hand off to the operating system.

Hrm, what kind of hub? And other devices work fine on this hub with no boot problems?

When the system freezes do the power led and battery led flash in any sequence? Or flash and breifly turn off? If so, that's the equivlant to old memory beep codes.

When the system is frozen, can you press the caps lock and see the light come on or off? If so, it might not be frozen... just taking a really long time to boot. How long have you left it hung with the ipod in the system?

The bios might be trying to resolve the ipod has a hard drive. Try taking the primary drive out of the laptop and then booting with the ipod connected. Does it freeze at the same spot? If not, do you get a primary drive not found error? If so, there might be some kind of whacky ide conflict going on...

Have you, at any point, used a like a usb hard drive that requires you to hook it up to a ps2 port to get power?

Do you have a notebook docking station of some kind?

You know, you could have a defective iPod. Have you been able to try this iPod on another system and it work fine? Is the ipod in its dock and then cable to the usb hub?

 

[TWIFOSP]

I know you've already changed your boot sequence, but this is sounding more and more like the system is scanning the entire ipod for a bootable sector.

Is there any option for like USB boot, or USB emulation? If so turn it off.

To prove it, wait like 10 minutes and I bet it boots eventually after scanning all 40 gigs of your ipod for a boot sector...

 

[pompoen]

I'm having similar problems with my 4th gen. iPod when using the usb port on my Fujitsu Siemens laptop. My iPod gets recognised but only after +/- 30 seconds and transferring music or data always fails. I tried everey related bios setting, reformated my iPod several times and even reinstalled windows but nothing changed. The strange thing is that my iPod connects perfectly with every other usb port I tried, even on other laptops. This particulary frustrating as I bought the 40Gb version especially to use it as an external hard drive for my laptop.

Still a happy ending though: I bought the apple 6 to 4 pin firewire converter on ebay for 5€. Everything works flawless right now, but my laptop doesnt charge my iPod this way.

A slightly off-topic question: if my ipod is connected to a pc, the hard drive spins continiously. Does this harm the drive or reduces its live span significantly?

 

[AuroraProject]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TWIFOSP I know you've already changed your boot sequence, but this is sounding more and more like the system is scanning the entire ipod for a bootable sector. Is there any option for like USB boot, or USB emulation? If so turn it off. To prove it, wait like 10 minutes and I bet it boots eventually after scanning all 40 gigs of your ipod for a boot sector...

I recommended he do this in an earlier post, I think he's tried it by now. Most Dells come with USB boot enabled don't they? I know both of my Dells did, I have since changed it. It makes sense on a laptop, but if you're not using it it doesn't need to be enabled.

I agree, it sounds as though it's trying to boot from the ipod.

 

[AuroraProject]

Checked the Dell forums, I found you're not the only one having this issue.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...d=350032#M1799

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...=350032#M23432

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...d=350032#M8642

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...350032#M161783

Seems the only workaround maybe disconnecting the ipod before booting the computer.

 

[TWIFOSP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject I recommended he do this in an earlier post, I think he's tried it by now. Most Dells come with USB boot enabled don't they? I know both of my Dells did, I have since changed it. It makes sense on a laptop, but if you're not using it it doesn't need to be enabled. I agree, it sounds as though it's trying to boot from the ipod.

Well you recommended he take it out of the boot sequence. But the bios is still going to try and resolve a boot sector even if it's not in the boot sequence. The bios has to know what boot sectors are available before it resolves which one to boot to.

I can almost bet that if the leaves it sitting there long enough it'll boot. What he needs to do is flat out disable the usb boot, but I am not sure that bios has that option, so disabling the usb emulation should do the trick.

I spoke to a buddy of mine who works on dell products in the product group and he confirmed both of our theories and explained that just disabling the boot sequence won't stop the bios for looking for a boot sector.

 

[AuroraProject]

I see what you're saying now. The usb emulation is under "Basic Device Configuration" on page 4 of the BIOS on my 600m. Davie, you should try to disable this as mentioned and see if this helps. Again, highlight it and change the status using either the spacebar or the arrow keys.

 

[Davie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuroraProject I see what you're saying now. The usb emulation is under "Basic Device Configuration" on page 4 of the BIOS on my 600m. Davie, you should try to disable this as mentioned and see if this helps. Again, highlight it and change the status using either the spacebar or the arrow keys.

Are there any potential negative consequences down the road from disabling usb emulation? I'm concerned that in a year from now, when I've probably completely forgotten about this, that I'll have "mysterious" problems with some other usb device. Maybe it would be better to leave the BIOS settings alone and just avoid booting with the iPod attached?

What do you guys think?