My daughter's IPOD TOUCH recently had the same issue with the Home button not working. I tried spraying a little bit of rubbing alcohol and using compressed air to clean it but no luck. Then I decided to do surgery on her IPOD, keeping my fingers crossed. First I ordered another home button, a new battery and the plastic tools to open the IPOD. Let me tell you that those plastic tools did not work for me. I broke three of them trying to open it and had to use a big flathead screwdriver while holding the IPOD wrapped with a towel so as not to scratch it. It took me a half-hour just to open it, those things are really hard to open. After I opened it, I followed the instructions on how to take it apart from many of these web sites that you buy parts from. You have to follow the instructions very carefully. The battery is glued down but the worse part is that it's soldered. I almost was just going to give up and just get my daughter a new one but since I already had ordered the parts I decided to go on. To make a LONG story short, I manage to get to the point just before you take out the screen, it seems that part of the home button is underneath it. In my opinion, the home button is cheaply designed. It has a little round sticker holding a little round metallic clicker which easily falls out once the glue on the sticker wears out. I sure hope the latest models have a better design for the home button, otherwise I see a lot of broken buttons in the future. I used little pieces of electrical tape to place on the bottom of the home button so hopefully the bottom would make contact with the little clicker. I spent more that one hour just doing this part since I was not sure it would work once I assembled the IPOD again. I also changed the battery since I hear that the battery lasts about two years and it's now two years old. The battery was female dog to solder. The contacts for the three wires are so small, I was afraid that if I used too much heat the board could be damage so I got my wife to hold the each wire as I applied the solder, no longer than 2 seconds of heat. I managed to get the battery wires soldered but again not knowing if the battery would work. I re-assembled the IPOD and said a little prayer. At this point I had spent about 5 hours and almost didn't care if it worked or not. After I placed the cover back on, I turned it on and nothing happened. Then I thought about it and quickly realized that I had installed a new battery. I connected the IPOD to my laptop and the screen turned on but it showed that I needed to turn on ITUNES. I was not sure if the home button worked at this point so I turn the IPOD off and used the home button to turn it on and it WORKED. Apparently when you this type of surgery on the TOUCH it looses everything you had on it. I had to reinstalled all my daughters music and apps but the best thing was that after the IPOD charged for a little while, I disconnect it from my laptop and the battery was also working..I could not believe it. Anyway, I don't know if I would do this again..but then again maybe I would....;-)
