::grumble:: Mac won’t help me restart my iPod without paying them $60 so i’m hoping someone here might be able to help.
My iPod’s software thinks that it is on hold (even though the slider at the top says otherwise). It fell under this magical state in the first week of April. I web-searched and someone on the web said to let the battery die to nothingness. I did this. To no avail. Whenever i plug it back in to power, it’s still on hold.
There’s no way to do the restart via the three buttons because it’s on hold. Isn’t there a manual restart somehow? Like one where i can erase the whole disk and get it to restart?
I have to admit that i’m *really* cranky with Mac about this one. You’d think that a noticeable defect in the software (documented by others on the web) would mean that they’d support you in fixing it. I’m a bit resentful by being demanded to pay $60 to fix it when i was thinking of upgrading at the end of the summer. Now i’m just questioning whether or not it’s worth upgrading because my iPod has been broken for half the time that i’ve had it.
my ipod was locked on, i just took a knife and started from bottom left hand side and opened it up if you stick the knife down between front case and board near the hold switch for some reason it lit up ipod then lock disapeared.
Hi there… just to let everyone know what worked for me..
Had the same prob as all of the above, i have a remote for my Ipod and one day it stopped working…thought the remote had died as Ipod still worked with headphones…but after a week or so the lock was there to stay, however i could sometimes get the lock off if i twisted the headphone jack whilst plugged into the Ipod so i knew it was hardware related and no amount of holding down button trickery would work for me…eventually this also stopped working and i was stuck.
In short… follow Sailracers instructions as to how to open your ipod.
When you open it, on one side will be the hard drive, screen, circuits.. blah blah blah…and on the empty silver side will be a small circuit board where the headphone jack plugs into and the Hold Button mechanism is housed…
Coming off that circuit board is a tiny ribbon cable that connects over to the ‘other half’ of your now open ipod.
If you look closely, that ribbon cable more than likely has either come loose or become totally disconnected from its plug. (i didnt notice this until i had given up and was putting everything back together again)
Because the ribbon cable connects under the circuit board, you now need to remove the 2 tiny screws, lift the board so you can now see the plug, push the ribbon back in, the screw the circuit board back down.
As soon as i did this i flicked the Hold switch and my Ipod came back to life, so i got a tiny piece of security tape and placed it over the ribbon which will hopefully stop it from working its way out in the future!
Worked for me, good luck folks.
I have a similar but different problem. My ipod won’t LOCK. The hold button moves back and forth but it never actually locks the ipod. I tried the Heather fix of putting it on its side and pushing but it didn’t work. Grrr….
yeah same thing happend to my i-pod it froz and people said the same thing to me wait until the battry dies then it would work again they said it happend to them and it worked after the battrey died
I have just RESTORED FACTORY DEFAULTS of my ipod 4th gen 40GB. In the end, he said the process was completed but I needed to plug my ipod into a wall charger to finish the preocess. I didn’t have one, so I just unplugged and plugged again my USB cable that also works as a recharger. This didn’t work. My ipod now just shows me an image of a wall socket goint into the directions of an electrical wall socket. Then, after talking to support, they told me to buy or use someone else wall recharger. I bought a wall recharger like the one in the link at the end of this message, but it didn’t solve my problem either! I tried to push strongly the silver back of my ipod against my desk, but it didn’t work either.
Can anyone help me? PLease!
Sorry about my bad english. The image above is: image of a cable going
into a wall electrical socket.
The link of the recharger:
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-61839991-carregador-bivolt-usb-para-mp3-mp4-ipod-fone-bluetooth-_JM
Thanks
tHaNk YoU sO mUcH!!!!
tHaNk YoU sO mUcH!!!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
My old Ipod has been gathering dust on the shelves since last year after I dropped it and it froze on lock.
Heather & others – THANKS 😀
**
So after 4 hours of reading, clicking, rock, paper, sissors, and every other solution here I did the following. Dissassembled the 5th gen iPod. Removed the battery, all ribbon cables, disk drive. Removed the 5 screws that hold the earphone jack and hold switch to the case. Removed the one screw that holds the hold switch together. Reseatted and cleaned all cables and connections and switch, and layed unit out on a towel with all the bits attached. Still dissassembled, for easy access to the wheel and buttons. Reenergized the unit on the bench by reconnecting the battery ribbon cable. The iPod was reborn and asking to be restored. Hooked unit up to computer. Held down select and play for 10 seconds. Computer then recognised an iPod that had to be restored. Restored the iPod this time as MAC formatted rather than PC formatted. Be warned this solution is absolutely last resort. Not for folks without some tiny tools and a gentle touch. The trick will be getting it all put back together again. At this point who cares, it is generation 5 and still has this flaw from the gen 1. Works fine on the bench, even the battery guage works again. If you take on this solution you have a 47% chance the iPod will not survive the operation. Those ribbon cables are fragile little rascals. Good Luck. E&OE
I dedicate this post to beast who in my opinion had the lol best post in this whole forum.
**
iPod nan 2 GB froze in hold mode. Holding the middle and top button to reset does not work, flicking switch back and forth does not work. All of the physical solutions I’ve been able to find seem to assume that you have an iPod classic or similar. Are there any solutions other than resetting for the nano’s?
please mail me if you have a solution bryanscot@gmail.com thanks!
After dropping my ipod nano on its head, it was stuck in the locked position — no matter how much I flipped the lock/unlock button, the little lock symbol remained displayed on the screen.
Soft fixes didn’t work. Holding the MENU and center button didn’t work because it was locked, not frozen. Restoring the ipod to its factory settings didn’t work, and it remained locked.
After attempting Heather’s fix (see upthread) for the better part of an hour, I decided the fault did not lie in a misaligned case.
So I resorted to the Luis method. Taking a steak knife I popped the HOLD button off entriely. A slim hole is underneath. Again using the knife I jammed it into that slit (not plumbing too far into the ipod of course) and wiggled the blade around. The switch was flicked, and it unlocked.
Not the prettiest fix — and my HOLD button flung to reaches unknown — but it works. I put a small piece of black electrical tape to cover the hole.
hey my ipod locked itselef and i dont know the password how would i unlock it
hey my ipod locked itselef and i dont know the password how would i unlock it
i locked my ipod and didnt mean 2 and i dont no the password how should i unlock it? email me pleas at rubenornelas@yahoo.com
My problem is….I was going to listen to music through itunes on the computer and itumes wasn’t coming up automatically. Long story short, I am stuck on lock with Do Not Disconnect still on…not flashing. Completely jammed. What to do? Please help! Cannot go on treadmill without it. lol I’m very serious!
My problem is I was going to listen to music through on the computer and itumes wasn’t coming up automatically. Long story short, I am stuck on lock with Do Not Disconnect still on…not flashing. Completely jammed. What to do? Please help! Cannot go on treadmill without it. I’m very serious!
solution for screen lock issue:
Go to my computer, then click on your ipod’s icon.
Next, go to iPod_control, then Device. There should be a file named Locked or something similar. Delete it and your ipod should be back to normal.
i tried the menu/select thing but the lock still appears help me please someone
i tried the menu/select thing but the lock still appears help me please someone
michael, are you blind or what? The answer is above your post.
I finally found the issue with my sister inlaws ipod.
I have posted my solution with pictures here:
http://www.cliqs.com/ipodfix/
If none of the software and other solutions worked for you, this could be your problem also.
I hope this helps some of you out there.
i have a ipod nano first gen. and the hold switch is messed up, it fell off, and im not sure if i should try to solder it, because i dont have any experience soldering… is there any way to download a software to overide it?, or is there a way to rig it without having to solder??? please HELP!!!!! thanks!
i have a ipod nano first gen. and the hold switch is messed up, it fell off, and im not sure if i should try to solder it, because i dont have any experience soldering… is there any way to download a software to overide it?, or is there a way to rig it without having to solder??? please HELP!!!!! thanks!
with my ipod the same. the hold button did not work. I just opened the housing (with my fingernails) and did slide the botten. I couls see the slider was not moving. by applying some pressure to the little metal-nose the swith was working again.
my ipod says that on tha top it is lock and i it is not on hold so what do you do ……………………P.S..please help me
my ipod is locked and i don’t know the password to it …..so can u please help me thanks
i lock my ipod from my sisters aand now it wont unlock.
Any recommendations on this same fix for an old iPod mini? The case isn’t split so the “click” trick will not work…
Congrats to all who now have working iPods!
Hi, thank you so much for this blog. None of these other suggestions was working, because my hold button wanst “stuck” – it was sliding back and forth jsut fine. However the lock icon still showed up on the ipod. This worked for me though, hooray!!!
David:
Just hold the “Hold” button down and switch it at the same time, my old 3rd gen got squished and that fixed the problem.
I hope that helps,
David
WAAH!
i locked my ipod and forgot the four digit code thingyy…
any help??
anyone know… email me at brandy.ray@hotmail.com!!
Well lets see my 2nd gen ipod got washed and about a month later after drying it out i pluged it in and nothing happened the computer didnt even notice when i pluged it in then a week later it magicly appeared at the bottom of the washer again.. made me mad i dryed it out for another month and now it comes on when i plug it in to the computer.. but i wont unlock. the lock button stays on there no matter what i do.
Please send me an email if you can help me unlock my ipod.
Thank you.
Jewel
Psycofarmbosdaughter@yahoo.com
my email.
Heather, your solution sounds funny but after trying several others it was the only one that works (turn it on the side and push the silver side hard…). My 3rd Gen IPod, which has worked flawlessly for 6 years, decided to lock forever, after unsuccessfully trying to unlock it I thought it was probably time for me to get a new one, but thanks to Heather’s magic, I’ll be saving some money.
The power of the web…
Thanks for all these comments…dating back so long!
I have I believe a 5th gen 80 gig photo/classic unit with a frequent hold button issue.
None of the suggestions on this site helped…here’s what I did:
I opened the unit per instructions here:
http://www.ipodbattery.com/slimipodinstall.htm
Open the unit but be sure not to disconnect or sever the data ribbons.
Slide the hold button from the outside of the unit and observe how the mechanism works within…eg some metal pieces slide back and forth each time you slide the external button.
I used my small screw driver to really force the internal metal pieces towards the unlock position…I think I could provide more force when pushing directly against the internal mechanism than when using the crappy external button.
So this worked!
Note: something I tried right before the solution above might have also helped (in conjunction with opening the unit per above).
Before opening the unit…look at the hold button zone. When the button slider is in the locked position, you see orange. When its physically unlocked, you see white.
The white you see is actually some kind of plastic material, that is plyable. I used my micro screwdrive to ‘force squish’ that plastic material toward the unlock position. It did move a few milimeters toward unlock, and this might have aided the 2ndary solution. As a spin off benefit, the white plastic material is now a little distressed and ‘thicker’…hopefully this will prevent the lock button from accidentally sliding again.
Good luck (lock) everyone.
my ipod is stuck with hold key….its locked on either side….can anyone explain the idea of pushing the silver line hard…….whether we have to push with our hand or with any special tool …. please reply……
OMGG! I went through and read ALL of these…I thought for sure that my iPod was a goner after only having it for 4 months….thanks to Gil all I had to do was press the menu and select button! so thank you!!!
I don’t wanna read everything on this page, but I need to mention I had the same problem and just fixed it. I may be a specific case, but whatever, here’s what happens.
I tried the ‘Heather’ trick… and it didn’t work. However, I think I know why it’s working for many people here. I decided to f*ck off and open the damn hardware, anyway it’s just an old iPod Photo 20 GB which I don’t really care about.
To open it, here’s what I did. Looks like there’s a little bit of glue to make the two parts (white and silver) stick together… I just used a hair dryer for 2 minutes and shot the high hot air everywhere on the sides. Then, I used a sharp knife on the top side to create a first opening. I then inserted a flat screwdriver in this opening and turned it a bit everywhere to open the iPod.
Then, I could see the subcircuit for the audio input and lock switch. I tried to shortcircuit some electrical pins on the switch to see if the iPod would turn on when pressing Play (otherwise it can’t turn on because it’s locked). No success here… however, I found out that this subcircuit is connected to the main circuit by a set of wires which can be unplugged/plugged easily (kind of a socket), probably for maintenance. Anyway, I think this wire set was a bit unplugged so that the lock switch had no effect. Reconnecting it properly made a ‘click’, and I guess when you press hard on the unopened iPod’s side, that’s what you do: reconnecting that wire set and hearing the ‘click’.
Works fine now!