My iPod is flashing apples!

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I did a stupid thing…I disconnected my iPod before the bar was full. I didn’t do it on purpose…I thought it actually was done. But after I disconnected it, it was frozen on the “OK to Disconnect” screen. I went online looking for what to do, and figured out that I had to reset it. So I reset it…and got the flashing Apple logo instead of an iPod menu. Went to the Apple support site and was told to put it in disk mode and let iTunes recognize it, then restore. So I did that…but I still get a flashing logo instead of anything helpful and it’s not being recognized as an iPod by my computer.

Am I going to have to find an Apple store?

2

Sounds like it… if it was a regular computer, I’d say that the boot software is hosed.

Which iPod is it?

3

Try doing a basic reset of the iPod. It’s the rough equivalent of a control-alt-delete on a PC.

I’m surprised the thing is still misbehaving after a Restore operation. If your computer is a Mac, fire up Disk Utility and try a Repair. If you’ve got a Windows PC, you should be able to run chkdsk on it.

4

It’s a classic.

I may see if I can start it in disk mode and do a disk utility on it…thanks, gotpasswords!

5

Nope. I do a reset, iTunes says it cannot read the iPod. I restore, it doesn’t restart. I do a reset again, and it says it doesn’t recognize it.

I tried to do a disk check on it (out of Properties) but it won’t even start one. It just says that it cannot do a disk check.

6

Possibly flash memory is corrupted.

Put your iPod into Diagnostics mode, select the flash test from the menu. It will check flash, and correct any problems. It may take a while if there is any problem. You’ll see a counter gradually increasing.

After you’ve run the flash test, select reset from the diagnostics menu, iPod will restart in normal mode.

It probably won’t erase your songs, but you do have them backed up, don’y you.

7

I have SDRAM test, I have SRAM test…I don’t have Flash test. Is that bad?

8

I’ve not used that particular model. The list of tests varies from model to model.
Try the two tests you listed, it can’t hurt.