I've just bought an iPod nano 3rd generation (4 GB) model. It arrived from Germany from a trip a cousin took there for his new job at Thyssenkrupp.

I decided to ask him to buy an iPod there because the price here in Brazil is an absurd. While in the USA it costs $ 149.00 and in Germany € 149.00, here in Brazil it costs an average of R$ 600.00.

I put my hands on the iPod on Saturday 12/22 in the afternoon although it were on my computer desk since the morning.

Firstly I tried to connect it in one of the USB ports I have on my computer. It didn't work. The computer refused to install the iPod and didn't recognize it at all. I kept trying any possible configuration but even after formatting the hard disk I couldn't get it functioning.

I googled for the causes of this problem and I found a lot of advices and possible solutions. For what I could see there are a lot of people with the same problem.

I spent more than 24 hours of constant research to get to a solution. It wasn't that obvious.

My motherboard is an ASUS A7S8X-MX and it has 4 USB 2.0 ports on the back. The USB controllers are from SiS, more specifically model SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller (look at the expanded node in the image bellow).

When I tried to connect the iPod to the computer I got an error message that stated that the device had malfunctioned. Sometimes the operating system tried to install the drivers but failed during the process and stated that the device could not work properly. In truth it didn’t work. I couldn't see the iPod neither in Windows Explorer nor in iTunes. So what was the solution? I got the motherboard manual and searched for USB. There is a jumper that controls how the USB ports are charged. It is described in the section “USB device wake-up” in the manual. What I did was just change the jumper position from +5V to +5VSB. After that the iPod was recognized by Windows XP SP2.

From what I could observe the iPod didn't have sufficient current so that every time it started to charge its battery the OS automatically ejected the device. This way I didn't have access to the iPod. Every time it connected and ejected automatically.

Now everything is working flawlessly and I've already synced some music. I'm listening to it.