OWC's iPod Battery Upgrade

I read about OWC's iPod battery upgrade a couple of weeks ago on Maccentral. I ordered it almost immediately, as my 2.5-year old iPod has a battery that lasts no more than 2.5 hours on a fresh charge.

Got this battery a couple of days ago in the mail, and I installed it that night. Now my iPod's dead. I put the original battery back in there, but no difference. If the iPod shows anything at all, it's a language menu with a lock icon in the upper left. I can not select anything. The buttons and scroll-wheel do nothing. Then my screen goes clear. All the button-pressing in the world does not change this.

I can charge my iPod. I can watch the little battery-power-level bars in the upper right go through their little progress animation thing. Then when it's fully charged, I get the check mark and no battery meter animation. I remove the iPod, only to get the language menu and a blank screen.

I wrote OWC's tech support, which was supposed to get back to me within 24 hours (or "most likely" within 24 hours). That was about 2 nights ago. I have yet to get anything but an automated message from those guys.

Unless I did something wrong that I am completely unaware of, performing this transplant somehow ruined my iPod. Let this be a warning to anyone considering a purchase of it (although I am certainly open to tech support suggestions).

hard reset

virividox said:

have u tried doing a hard reset? or reloading the ipod software?

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Hard reset? I did reinstall the software. Twice. What's a hard reset?

As for Duff-man, thanks for your comments. You may be right. I hope not, but it would be the first time for me.

Hold switch and not playing

Elan0204 said:

The hold switch isn't on, right? Becasue when it is, there is lock symbol present in the upper left, and "all the button pressing in the world" will do nothing until the hold switch is moved to the off position.

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Thanks Elan. That solved the lock-up problem I was having, but the thing still shuts completely down after a few moments. And, again, "all the button pressing" does nothing to wake it from its coma.

Hard resets

virividox said:

Reboot an iPod


09/12 2003 - Even the best MP3 player on the market can sometimes run into trouble. Remember, it's only a machine, and as you know, machines run on software and software is easily confused. This might happen if you, against all warnings, take the iPod out of the dock while it is mounted on your desktop.

Click to expand...

I can safely say that this is not the reason.

virividox said:

iPod hard reset

If your iPod won't mount on your computer's desktop and can't be soft restored, you need to hard reset. Follow these steps to mount the iPod:
Connect the iPod to a built-in FireWire port on your computer (it won't work with an unpowered FireWire port on a PC Card, for example).
Reset the iPod by pressing the Play and Menu buttons for 10 seconds.
When you see the Apple logo, press and hold the Previous and Next buttons for 10 seconds.
The FireWire icon should appear in your iPod's display.

Click to expand...

I got everything but the firewire icon. The problem, I'm beginning to feel, is power-related. There's something up with this battery. I'm gonna try recharging the original battery and see what happens. If that works, then I know it's OWC's battery.


Thanks folks.

re: iPod battery

Alright folks, this is interesting. My original iPod battery's playing just fine. No falling into a coma after 10 or so seconds. It's OWC's battery. This bad boy just doesn't want to charge up.

Thanks everybody. I got some complaining to do.