A week ago I got my ex wifes Ipod, it is a 10gb second generation I believe.. (She got our 1200 CD collection - the sad part of this is I'm an attorney). She uses a Mac, I have a new computer running Windows XP. Having lost the property battle, I'm determined to at least get this thing to work on Windows.

I learned that first I needed a firewire card so on the advice of folks who know far more than I do I bought a CompUSA PCI 1394 Firewire host adapter and a Belkin 1394 6 pin cable.

I then downloaded the Musicmatch software, the ipod manager and the 2.0 ipod software. Later, I learned from the folks at apple (who want $49 to answer my questions but did help a little) that I needed to download the 1.2.6 updater, which I read on the old forums here as well. I did that and deleted the 2.0 software.

The Apple tech stated that I needed to reformat the ipod, so he walked me through that. On the ipod manager screen I later hit the launch 1.2.6 updater and followed directions, though I don't have a warm fuzzy feeling about it.

I then went to the Musicmatch Portable plus and hit the add portable device button, then clicked on first ipod. Eventually I got a warning screen that states "ipod software is currently running and cant be shut down. Please manually shut down all ipod software and retry."

Since I've already invested close to $100 and would really like to get something out of my first marriage, I would greatly appreciate any advice.

How do I get this thing to work? I am obviously doing something wrong but cant figure out what. None of the previous forums specifically dealt with my problem.