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When iPod is set to automatic mode iTunes automatically updates iPod’s music library whenever you connect iPod to your computer. iTunes transfers new songs you’ve added, and erases songs you’ve removed. However, the first computer you connect iPod to is its “home” computer, and the music library from that computer is copied to iPod. When you connect iPod to another computer, an alert box appears with this message

If for any number of reasons you have to reformat and then reinstall iTunes, as I recently had to, you will get the same error.

Now there are two ways around this

1. Use a program other than iTunes to manage your music
2. Trick your iPod into thinking that it is always connected to the same computer

You can do a simple search to find dozens of software that will manage your media with your ipod, so I will focus on the second  method.

Trick your iPod into thinking that it is always connected to the same computer

1. First find the two files “iTunes library.itl” and “iTunes Music library.xml” These will be in your iTunes folder on your computer.
2. If you are just moving to a new computer or want to have two copies of your entire iTunes library, one on each computer, then simply copy both files from your iPod’s home computer to the second computer.
3. If you want to be able to manage your media on both computers but dont want to overwrite your second computer with the library from your first computer then backup both these files to a safe location.
4. Download a Hex editor
5. On your iPod’s home computer open iTunes Music Library.xml in a text editor (notepad) and find the “Library Persistent ID”
6. Copy down the 16 character string between the “<string>” tags
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 on the second computer
8. Replace the “Library Persistent ID” on the second computer with the one that you copied from the iPod’s home computer
9. Open your Hex editor and click find and replace
10. Enter the “Library Persistent ID” from the second computer into the find field and the “Library Persistent ID” from the iPod’s home computer into the replace field.  Make sure that you are matching by Hex not ASCII
11. Click “Replace All” and close and save the file
12. attach your iPod and Set one or both computers to Manually manage music

Set your iPod to manually sync with iTunes

1. Open iTunes if necessary.
2. Select your iPod from the device list
3. Go to the summary tab
4. Click “Manually manage music and videos”
5. Click apply

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