Microsoft has posted a patch for Windows Vista that finally allows iPod owners to eject their music player from PCs running the new operating system without the risk that songs will be damaged.

The updates - one each for the 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista - can be downloaded from Microsoft's support site here.

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Apple highlighted the Vista iPod corruption problem in February. At the time, it also said its iTunes jukebox application wasn't entirely happy running under the new OS, but a pair of subsequent updates have eliminated most, but not all, of the incompatibilities between the two.

The most recent version of iTunes, 7.1.1, still has a few Vista-releated glitches, Apple admits: the app won't run on 64-bit Vista, there's an issue with contacts synchronisation and a bug with the way iTunes displays text and graphics. These are relatively minor problems, but the iPod data corruption issue is more serious.

As yet, Apple has not updated its own Vista iPod support page to highlight the new Microsoft fix.