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exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
i experienced a most troubling problem with my 5g ipod earlier today. i was in the middle of listening to the song, and when i went to the menu to select another track, the thing just froze completely. at first i thought it was just a delay or something caused by the drive head reading. and that was when i realized that the scrollwheel and buttons had ceased to function altogether (and no, 'hold' wasn't on). also, the backlight was locked on (when i normally have it set to 5 sec). i tried plugging it into my pb (both usb ports) to no avail. ipod updater didn't see it, nor did itunes. the screen was completely locked. ultimately i just left it out and let the battery drain, and now it seems to be working fine. i've seen a few other threads her about freezing in the 5g, but what concerns me here is that i couldn't even reset. scary frustrating. anyone else experienced this, or have any idea what might have caused it?
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
mad jew said:
How long did you hold the reset combination down for? Sometimes it takes a little while.

i tried to reset several times, at one point keeping them down for well over a minute, but the thing was quite literally frozen solid. i still have my 3g ipod which i got a couple of years ago, and whenever that one got glitchy i could always reset and it would work just fine. i guess my curiosity/concern right now with the reset having not worked is whether or not this may be indicative of a more fundamental problem that should be addressed.
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
mad jew said:
That's weird. You say it's working well now, did you eventually manage to restore it or has it literally just started co-operating?

after i let it sit out for a few hours, the battery eventually drained. when i put it into my dock/charger, i got the black-screen-with-silver-apple-logo, and a few seconds later it seemed back to normal. and just to make sure it was functioning, i hooked it up to my pb and it synched with itunes just fine. while my initial intention would have been to restore it, that was impossible while it was frozen as my pb wouldn't recognize it, and as for right now it seems to be functioning just fine. this is the first glitch i've encountered with this ipod, which i've only had for about six weeks. do you think something might have been corrupted on the drive that would have caused it to lock up like that? if so, it wouldn't be too much of a chore to restore it. what worries me more though is what might have caused it or if it will become a recurring problem. potential major inconvenience.
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Every now and then the hard drive gets shocked and freezes. Sometimes it continues to try to pick up where it left off but fails and ends up overheating in the process so letting it cool down generally puts things back to normal. I wouldn't bother restoring it at this stage although I'd certainly give it a go if it happens again. :)
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
thank you much for the help. while i've only started posting here rather recently, i've been reading these boards ever since august (when i took the plunge and got my pb), and i must say that this community has made quite a wonderful impression on me. :)
 

Piarco

macrumors 68030
Jun 24, 2004
2,529
0
Londinium
Same thing happened to my nano (and a couple of other folks - so it can't just be a 5G HDD problem) and I had to do exatly what exeterbohemian did - nowt. After the battery had run down, and after charging everything was alright - and has been since then. So don't worry that its going to be a regular thing!
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
Piarco75 said:
Same thing happened to my nano (and a couple of other folks - so it can't just be a 5G HDD problem) and I had to do exatly what exeterbohemian did - nowt. After the battery had run down, and after charging everything was alright - and has been since then. So don't worry that its going to be a regular thing!

well it's certainly good to know that i'm not the only one. :)

the fact that this is occuring on the nano as well leads me to believe that it has to be a firmware problem. which would leave me inclined to wonder how exactly one goes about reporting these sorts of things to apple...
 

Sharewaredemon

macrumors 68020
May 31, 2004
2,014
273
Cape Breton Island
exeterbohemian said:
i tried to reset several times, at one point keeping them down for well over a minute, but the thing was quite literally frozen solid. i still have my 3g ipod which i got a couple of years ago, and whenever that one got glitchy i could always reset and it would work just fine. i guess my curiosity/concern right now with the reset having not worked is whether or not this may be indicative of a more fundamental problem that should be addressed.


Something I noticed in this post is that you mentioned you had a 3G iPod.

Do you know that the reset combination is different on the 4G and 5G iPods?

Just making sure you weren't holding the wrong buttons. :)
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
Sharewaredemon said:
Something I noticed in this post is that you mentioned you had a 3G iPod.

Do you know that the reset combination is different on the 4G and 5G iPods?

Just making sure you weren't holding the wrong buttons. :)

it's my understanding that the reset combination for the 5g is the menu button and the center button. i've also heard that you're supposed to turn the hold switch on and off before. which is what i did. (things were so much easier before apple had to adopt the clickwheel across the line). :)
 

dcv

macrumors G3
May 24, 2005
8,021
1
I experienced the same freezing problem on my 4G 40GB iPod and was also unable to reset it and had to let the battery drain completely. I managed to charge it again afterwards, but it then started skipping on several tracks and after that incident I couldn't update it with iTunes; it just wasn't being recognised.

As it was only 5 months old I took it back to the shop but they were unable to repair it and so gave me a replacement.

Just keep an eye on it... if it starts to skip at all then the hard disk is probably on its way out...
 

aricher

macrumors 68020
Feb 20, 2004
2,211
1
Chi-il
Was this a problem with a Windows or Mac formatted 5G? My Mac formatted 5G has performed flawlessly (knock wood) so far. A co-worker's Win. format 5G is very slow in menu changes, video startup and has had this same freeze problem twice now.
 

exeterbohemian

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 10, 2006
204
0
brooklyn
aricher said:
Was this a problem with a Windows or Mac formatted 5G? My Mac formatted 5G has performed flawlessly (knock wood) so far. A co-worker's Win. format 5G is very slow in menu changes, video startup and has had this same freeze problem twice now.

oh, my ipod is most definitely mac formatted. :)
 
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