Fix for voice recognition not updating/playing tracks on iPod/iPhone/USB

Hey everybody,

A while back I plugged my old iPod into the usb port after I reset and resynced it, and tried to use voice recognition to play a song on my Prius 3 with Display Audio with Entune/Nav. This usually works perfectly. I got the "the media device is syncing" prompt, which is where the voice recognition is caching all the media info. This is normal and usually doesn't take very long. It then is supposed to cache this information until the media device has new tracks on it.

However, somehow the process was interrupted and only synced about two artists. I could use VR to play those songs, but if I tried to play any other it would just say "the artist isn't recognized", or try again. The system could see all the songs and I could browse and play them no problem, but could not play them through VR. I removed all my songs and resynced it to itunes, but it would not reinitiate the media sync process! I then went in and specifically removed all the artists that were synced with the VR and it still would not update! Even doing a complete reset on the iPod it still only allowed VR on those two artists.

I plugged in my other two ipods and my iphone, as well as a simple usb flash drive, and all of those devices would do the sync process properly and VR would work! I believe that when entune caches the media info it caches for multiple devices and remembers which is which based on serial number and unique IDs that persist even if the device is reset, and since that one iPod had the process interrupted the media info cache was corrupted and entune never attempted to update it again(it probably errored and has poor error handling).

The dealership was useless, they tried telling me my iPod wasn't supported even though the manual said it was and I had been using it with VR for months and it still worked, just only for the two artists it already synced.

Anyway, I tried unplugging the battery for an hour, nothing. I tried to Reset entune and delete personal info. Nothing. What actually fixed it was the "secret menu" available on gen 3 entune with nav systems.(NOT the premium HDD 7in screen systems)

Go to Settings -> General. Scroll down and choose volume. Chose navigation prompt volume. On that screen press the Top Right below the arrow, then bottom right, then top right alternating for a total of 6 presses. This brings up the hidden diagnostic menu. Then go to general then click reset Extension Box. Wait for it to come back up, go back in the secret menu, click General then click Delete all personal data and reset nav calibration.

After I did that I plugged my ipods back in, every one of them properly did the media sync and VR worked for every song! I believe that this would also work if you had a USB device or android phone that was also not working for VR. Also the navigation and everything still is fine. It seemed the nav was miscalibrated for a minute by a half mile or so, but after driving around for a few minutes with the map running it seemed to self calibrate and was as accurate as ever. It also did not delete my radio presets but I had to reset my bluetooth and my stored contacts.

Sorry for the long story, but this might help someone one day, I searched and could not find anything about it!