Yes, we all know Apple's been taking their precious time releasing a truely stable version of iTunes for Vista, but that's not what I want to reiterate. Last night, I spent three uninterrupted hours getting my iPod working in one form or another. After reading pages and sites out the wazoo that say "have an iPod? Don't get Vista!" Not an option, sorry... And it's definitely not an option to switch to Mac. So I decided to figure out why things were being this way.

Turns out, the problems I've been experiencing with iTunes are two-fold. One is a GUI issue where iTunes turns white and doesn't let me click menus. This is something that APPLE needs to fix, and they've had plenty of time to do so. The other problem is an iPod sync issue where you get this message:

iTunes could not save to your Music folder because you do not have write access. Check the permission on your Music folder and folders in your Music folder, then try copying this file again.

This message was very vague for me... I was syncing TO my iPod. Why does it need to write to my Music folder? Does it mean the music folder on my harddrive? Does it mean the music folder on my iPod?

In Windows XP, iTunes stores music in the "My Music" folder for the user you're logged in as. For me, in XP, it was C:\Documents and Settings\GermanShepherd\My Documents\My Music. In Windows Vista, Microsoft gave our "My" folders a little souping up and reorganization. The "My Music" folder in Vista is now located at C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music, and there's a shortcut at the Windows Vista "My Documents" folder (which is now called C:\Documents and Settings\GermanShepherd\Documents... Notice the lack of "My" in the name) that points to C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music so older programs still work similarly. However, there seems to be a problem with iTunes and writing to C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music.

I'll cut to the chase and skip all the horrible trial and error I was going through for three hours and say that I fixed the issue! I merely deleted the shortcut to C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music in C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Documents and created a REAL folder called "My Music" there, then moved everything from C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music to C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Documents\My Music. Now my iPod syncs perfectly!

Here's a quick list you can try if you're having trouble:

1. Visit http://www.tweakvi.com and download TweakVI for Vista. (You do not need to purchase it. The free version has the features we need.)
2. Close iTunes, if it's running.
3. Navigate to C:\Users\(your_user_name)\Documents.
4. Delete the shortcut to "My Music".
5. Create a new folder called "My Music".
6. Navigate to C:\Users\(your_user_name)\Music and copy everything in that folder to C:\Users\(your_user_name)\Documents\My Music.
7. Install TweakVI and open "Miscellaneous Tweaks" on the left panel.
8. Click "Change System Folder Settings" on the right panel.
9. On the window that pops up, scroll down to the entry for "My Music", select it, click "Change..." and choose C:\Users\(your_user_name)\Documents\My Music. Click "Save System Folder Locations" and exit TweakVI. (You do not need to restart Vista at this moment, but it might be a good thing to do later to update all links to "My Music".)
10. Open iTunes, go to Edit> Preferences> Advanced Tab> General Tab.
11. Change "iTunes Music folder location" to C:\Users\(your_user_name)\Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music.
12. Restart iTunes.

This is what I did after having copied my entire music library directly from XP and onto Vista. I've deduced that iTunes searches for what Windows calls the "My Music" folder and automatically stores files there. It doesn't matter if "My Music" is actually C:\Music or F:\Music, all iTunes has to do is access the Windows "My Music" folder.

The problem is that Vista's default "My Music" shortcut isn't exactly read/write friendly for iTunes, so we have to change "My Music" to another location that IS read/write friendly for iTunes. Vista problem? iTunes problem? Both? I don't know, I don't care, but it works now.

This may or may not work for you as I've spelled it out, since I'm pretty sure I flubbed it when I copied things over from Windows XP, but, regardless, iTunes can't read from C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music, so you need to use TweakVI to change "My Music" from C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Music to some other location that is writeable. I just decided to change it to C:\Users\GermanShepherd\Documents\My Music, because then the address is still the shortcut "My Documents\My Music" and I don't have to update my entire iTunes library, but you could make "My Music" C:\Music if you REALLY want to. Just make sure it conforms to the standard "My Music" folder structure or you'll run into more problems.

On a related note...

There is an issue in Vista where unplugging your iPod via Vista's "Safely Remove Hardware" feature may corrupt the iPod [apple.com]. This has been addressed by Microsoft and they have released a downloadable hotfix [microsoft.com]. I suggest you head on over there and download the thing, install it, and restart as soon as you can.

Even if you don't want Doctor Who, here's an interesting look at how something like this evolves over time. The first episodes aired in 1963 and new episodes and new Doctors kept coming off and on until now! There should be about... 10 different intro themes, but I'm not sure. Frankly, I lose count while I watch!

But see if you can guess the eras that these different intros aired! I was definitely able to pick out the 80s and 90s, but each other one seems to have its own era signature, too.

So I made TW draw a Dalek for me because I was bored. Surprisingly, he actually AGREED. But then I got bored waiting for him to finish, so I made one of my own! Not the best Dalek you've ever seen, but it's... a Dalek! A Dalek going Rawr! Because he's angry. I submitted it to deviantArt, too!

Okay, first off... My Programming Logic and Design class! It's pretty fun. I enjoy learning about the concepts of programming. I've learned a few things that will help me in future writing. (What little I do.) The painful part of the class are the assignments... Especially when they want you to draw a flowchart. There's just no easy way to do it in Word, and it's really slow and time consuming when you have to draw each shape separately and draw each arrow separately.

Luckily, this assignment, there were no flowcharts assigned! We just had to do pseudocode, which I'm a whiz at! I can be done with pseudocode in about 20 minutes. But I'm not here to brag! I wanted to say that I found something... Interesting. Each assignment has two parts. A discussion board assignment where we write a pseudocode and post it and have people critique it and look it over for bugs and get suggestions and all that jazz. The other assignment part is to submit stuff to the instructor and she grades it. Anyway, the discussion board suddenly took a turn to weirdness...

There are about seven people who post in the discussion board, including me. There's one fellow who always posts first, and then I follow in his footsteps, and then everyone posts in a throng after us. The first guy really knows his stuff and sometimes it's nice for him to break the ground first so I have somewhat of an idea what program they want us to write. Most of the time, they ask us to choose one of about four problems to work out.

So he posted his, I posted mine... Then I waited for the others so I could make my required comments on them, which I was able to do today. I noticed a couple of people didn't have comments, yet, so I visited them! I opened their posted file and... Hmm... Something looked... Awfully familiar about this code. Different document format, and some slight modifications, but it looks VERY familiar. I scrolled down to the more complex parts of the code and it all fell into place! It was MY code. I had even put in a few unnecessary carriage returns/line feeds to help me read some parts better... And they were there. I had a nice error warning message that they had modified just enough to change it, but it was still clearly mine. The variables were the same and there was even a small bug in a couple of module calls that I never corrected that they copied, too. I debated leaving a comment that simply said "The code looks perfectly flawless!" with a little winky emote, but I left a slightly more serious one instead.

Okay, so one comment down, another one to go. I browse some more posts and come to another one with a low amount of comments, so I open their file and start reading the code... Uh oh. This code looks familiar, too. I scroll down to the module calls and yep! My bug was there. I scrolled down to the error notification code and yep! Slightly changed, but still my basic idea.

(Okay, see, it basically says "Warning! (number) does not exist! Please check TRANSACTION FILE RECORDS. Advancing record." The first person took out the "(number) does not exist" part and the "advancing record" part and left my capital "check TRANSACTION FILE RECORDS" part. Clearly mine. The second person cut out the last two sentences and left "Warning! (number) does not exist!" Now, there's an extra bit of code that allows it to print the proper number, and that's the same. Clearly mine.)

I scrolled down to the complex code of the program and yep! My unneccesary carriage returns/line feeds were there to separate some IF THEN statements. Blah! Someone ELSE copied my code, too! This time, I just ignored them and moved it. Then I read someone elses post and it was pretty much a 1:1 copy of the guy who always posts first! Right down to the little bug he had on one of his sanity checks. Incredible. I go to read someone ELSES code and they copied the first guy, too!

Four of Seven people copied previous posts... Over half. Amazing.