I have several mp3 players in rotation, but my iPod Nano 4G just bricked yesterday when I hooked it up to the computer. The screen is on, but frozen and non-responsive. iTunes cannot talk to it or "Restore" it -- it fails every time to communicate with it.

No control works or causes any effect on it.

Any ideas on how to un-brick it or wake it up? I'm fine with formatting it completely and re-syncing it. But it's a complete vegetable right now.

I don't know if this is the solution, Jay. But try this link and see if the instructions here help.


http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/nano4gen/#

Or, just send it to me.

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.

Give it some tea.

Is that a euphemism?

Like most of you, I have the shake to shuffle feature on my iPod touch, but I refuse to use it. It can't be good to shake an iPod, right? That has to be bad for any technology. Right?

Whoops. I read that as iPod Shuffle. Yeah, if it has a harddrive in it,
I don't think I would shake it.

If you enjoy shaking it, maybe you can still get a bootleg copy of the Baby Shaker game.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAM9VFM6HzY[/youtube]

Sick.

Buy CDs instead.

Have you tried the Reset procedure for the Nano? On my Nano, this is done by sliding the Hold switch on and off, and then holding down Menu and the center select button for 10 seconds. Repeat as needed. You may first need to hook the device up to its USB cable for a while to make sure it is sufficiently charged (if it has lost all of its charge).

Nah. For an all solid-state item like the iPods with flash memory, you can't shake it hard enough to hurt it.

I got it -- I hooked it up to my car, which couldn't communicate with it, but at least jolted the frozen screen off of it.

Then I came back in and plugged the USB cable into a different slot. It recognized it. It was still full of gremlins and not recognizing my library on it, but it recognized it enough to format it reset it to factory.

Then I tried to resync it -- it's got enough stuff on it to get me through the week (the podcasts and audiobooks I actually want to listen to this week), but it's still got some gremlins. It won't sync all the stuff onto it. For some playlists and audiobooks, it just won't put it all on there. (And it's not even close to full).

That was my first response but I wasn't sure if the Touch had a solid-state drive or not.

Of course, all of this could've been avoided if Jay had simply thought twice before hooking his IPod into his blender while making frozen marmalade lemonade last Friday.