iTunes 8 KOs Vista With ‘Blue Screen of Death’ Bug
Apple’s latest iTunes 8 update appears to cause the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) for many Windows Vista users. Judging by the 300+ messages in a thread on the Apple forums, the issue is quite widespread.
UPDATE: Apple has supposedly fixed the problem, issuing a patch late Friday morning. Here’s the solution, let us know if it works.
Apple’s support note addressing the problem tersely reports: “After installing iTunes 8 for Windows, some users may see a blue screen error message when connecting iPhone or iPod to a Windows Vista computer.”
The BSOD appears to be related to USB drivers for the iPhone and iPod conflicting with non-Apple USB drivers.
For those hit by the BSOD when plugging in an iPhone or iPod into iTunes 8, Apple posted a workaround: uninstall iTunes 8. A second support note offers a few other options like trying to isolate the issue to see “if there is a USB conflict by disconnecting other USB devices connected to the computer such as a printer, digital camera, scanner, etc.”
The other solution Apple offers is to try connecting to different USB port, or to disconnect all your other USB devices.
Frankly, none of Apple’s suggestions were particularly helpful for the average user, save simply uninstalling iTunes 8. For the time being, if you’ve encountered the problem we’d suggest just dumping iTunes 8 and waiting for Apple to release an update that addresses the issue. Apple has since released a fix for iTunes 8 users running Vista.
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