iPod Woes

I've had some crazy stuff going on with my iPod over the past few days. I skied with it on Saturday. At the top of A-Basin, I put my headphones on and tried to fire up the tunes. The pod made a scary clack-clack-clack sound, so I turned it off. It had worked earlier in the day at the same altitude; it had worked earlier in the season in colder temperatures. I didn't know what to think. When I plugged it into the car for the ride home, it worked just fine.

It worked fine all day Sunday. Today on the way to work, I dropped it for the first time ever. I ended up with just the smallest scuff on the stainless side, on the corner, just behind where the earphones plug in. I picked it up, and it worked fine.

On the way home today, I was running up the stairs on the bridge over the train tracks. My hand lightly bumped the iPod in my pocket right as it was changing songs. It just stopped. It showed play, but was clearly paused. I reset the pod, but instead of starting back up, I got the sad-iPod icon. I knew that could only be bad news.

I came home and followed the support link shown below the sad-iPod to try out the Apple troubleshooting suggestions. Repeatedly resetting the device did nothing: sad-iPod. I was repeatedly unable to get it to enter diagnostic mode: sad-iPod. After about the 10th try I was able to get it to register as being in disk mode, but the computer still wouldn't recognize the device, and it still gave me nothing other than sad-iPod. I ran iPod Updater/Restore time and again, and it couldn't see the iPod: only sad-iPod. Finally, I got Updater/Restore to recognize the device after both rebooting the computer and putting the device into disk mode for the fourth, trying time. After confirming that I was willing to sacrifice all content on the device, I clicked Restore. Sad-iPod because the computer says that it "can't mount iPod."

So, AAACKK! Now what? Send it in? Smash it? Shoot it? Drop big bucks for a new device? Google to the rescue. The "can't mount iPod" query led me to this thread. The prescribed remedy? Drop it, smack it, or throw it. Seriously. Drop your iPod to make it work again. One commenter suggested a five-foot drop on to carpet. I started with a measured, four-foot drop to my carpeted floor. Nothing, sad-iPod; did I just make it worse? Another try. This time from five feet. I dropped it so that the device landed flat on its backside.

This time, I turned it on, got the Apple logo, and found all of the songs and settings to be just where they were when I left the house this morning. Amazing. Weird. Just glad it worked. I was starting to panic.



Jonathan 5/15/2006 05:52:00 PM