iPod Restoration Help

Blankspace

I've had an iPod Video for about a year or so now, and it's worked great. A few weeks ago it froze up one day and when I manually restarted it it would work sluggishly for a bit then freeze up. I read somewhere that hitting it against a flat surface fixed it, so I tried it and lo and behold it worked. Fast forward to tonight and it begins a repeat performance, I try the same bang-on-hard surface technique and now it just froze up again. I manually restarted it and it came to life, but in black and white reading "Plug into computer and use iTunes to restore settings." I plugged it in, clicked restore to factory settings and let it do it's business. It says it's restored and will show up on iTunes in 15 seconds. It doesn't load and says "You must restore iPod to factory settings."

tl:dr, my iPod is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop with restoring it's factory settings, how do I fix this?


Oh god I hope I don't have to buy a new one.

Rhino

blankspace247 wrote: »

I read somewhere that hitting it against a flat surface fixed it, so I tried it and lo and behold it worked.

The ones with video are Hard Disk based and not flash, right?

For furture reference, Anything that has a "hard drive" in it, should NEVER been Jolted like that.

This goes for computers, laptops, hard drives (from computers), camcorders (that have hard drives in them), music devies or anything with a "normal" hard drive. the less impact on them, the better. Most modern day hard drives can stand up to a bit of abuse, but if you jolt/hit them to hard it can screw up the head alignement and/or scartch/rut the platters. Also it's [typically] even worse for them to do this while it's running (most drives try to 'lock' the heads while not in use, but still - it's mechinal and not good for them).

What site did you read this on?


Anyways... try to get into "Debug Mode" and then see if you can get any more info from that. That might give you an idea on what is wrong with it.

Here is the info for getting into debug mode:
http://www.command-tab.com/2006/03/30/hidden-ipod-commands/

EDIT:
http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/c0404/24c04/24c04.asp&guid=

As hard drive read/write heads are in operation, moving back and forth across the hard drive platter to read and write data, the hard drive mechanism is at its most vulnerable position. As it works, the hard drive read/write head hovers about 3 millionths of an inch above the platter. (For comparison, a speck of dust is about 1 thousandth of an inch in diameter.) If the computer suffers a severe jolt while the read/write head is in operation, the jolt could knock the head out of alignment, potentially causing physical damage to the hard drive platter and destroying the data on the platter.

[for the most part] Hard drive is harddrive, regardless if it's in a laptop or iPod.


Seriously, who told you to bash your iPod? That's pertty bad advice.

Blankspace

Can't find the link, Hrm..... I remeber it was along with the 360 Towel Trick.

Rhino

blankspace247 wrote: »

Can't find the link, Hrm..... I remeber it was along with the 360 Towel Trick.

towel trick? Do I want to know?

Blankspace

Now that one I can verify. You get the 3 red rings o' death, you wrap a towel around your 360, let it run for an hour or so. Turn it off, take off the towel and let it cooldown for the same time you let it run and BAM! It'll work for a while. It's not permanent though.


I went into Diagnosis Mode, did auto test and see,ongly passed everything until the accessorize test, it says

Please plug FW
LCD ID : 1
FWPWR : 0

and won't exit that screen.

Rhino

blankspace247 wrote: »

Now that one I can verify. You get the 3 red rings o' death, you wrap a towel around your 360, let it run for an hour or so. Turn it off, take off the towel and let it cooldown for the same time you let it run and BAM! It'll work for a while. It's not permanent though.

uh... so you basically just overheat your xbox?

My god. no offense to you personally, but those are about the 2 worst piece of tech advice I've ever seen.

Hard drives don't like to get hit/jolted
Electronics (ram, cpus, caps, etc) don't like excessive amounts of heat.

I went into Diagnosis Mode, did auto test and see,ongly passed everything until the accessorize test, it says

Please plug FW
LCD ID : 1
FWPWR : 0

and won't exit that screen.

odd.

I'm not an ipod expert (I kind of hate them actucally), but I think that means you don't have any firewire
power?

Try plugging it in the firewire cable (FWPWR = FireWirePoWeR [?]) and re-doing it and see if that gets you further into the debug menu.

neth

you can probably take it to an apple store have them diagnose the problem and decide where to go from there if you can't make sense of the debug information. Did you try formatting the iPod since the groundhog day symptoms started?

also, a quick google reveals some people have had to wait 30 min for the debug to complete, did you wait that long?


as for the 360 towel trick, one source of the 3-ring problem is the solder cracking because the mother board bends slightly, overheating it again softens the solder and allows the connections to be remade.

Everywhereasign

The Ipod Restorative Precussion Treatment works with ipods that are very dead and showing the HD missing/dead icon. On some of the older ones the HD plug would come loose. For people not willing to take apart their Ipod (not sure why if it's already dead) banging it against a surface (like a thick stack of paper) can jolt the plug back into place.

I'm totally aware that this also has an excellent chance of frying your HD, that's why I took mine apart and fixed it by unplugging and re-plugging the HD.

It doesn't sound like that's the problem though. It wouldn't be working 'sluggishly' it would be giving you an icon to indicate the death or absence of a HD. But in general I agree, hitting something that relies on spinning platters and microscopic distances between moving parts is not a good idea. Try the diagnostic again and let it run, for a little while, it can take a while.
Depending on your love of the device, Ipodresq has a good track record and decent prices.

redimpulse

Yeah FWPWR does mean firewire power, but yours is a video, correct? Which means it charges via USB, so that really shouldn't be an issue.

And it sounds like your HDD issue is probably a corrupted block.

JPArbiter

son, what in the hell were you thinking slamming an iPod against the desk???

if you live in a city with an apple store take it there. if the Genius Bar can get it working then you should count your lucky stars. if however slamming it permanatly screwed it up, you deserve to have to pay for another pod.

for future reference with a video ipod, restart by holding down the center button and play for 3 seconds. if it is still having trouble then you plug it into computer and restore it back to facotry default and DO NOT SLAM IT AGAINST A DESK EVER AGAIN!

Rhino

also, just FYI - it probably voids iPod/Apple warranty by slamming it around like that.