Zen & The Art Of Concussive iPod Maintenance

In early December, my iPod Photo froze while I was listening to it. I dutifully attempted to reset it - and to do all the other things the Apple site says you should do - but to no avail. It struggled over and over to start up again with tragically wheezy hard disk movements, before giving me the old 'sad iPod icon' and falling into a deep, deep coma.

Despite this, something told me it might not be dead - for this had happened before, and Lazarus-like it had risen again. So I took it to the Apple store in Regent Street. Maybe it needed a replacement battery. Or something.

Sadly, the Apple Genius (sic), who was a very nice man, told me after what I guess they would call running some diagnostics, but which looked suspiciously to me like giving it a bit of a fiddle and plugging it into an iBook - that it had, and I quote, 'gone to iPod Heaven' (how lovely to think that there is an other-wordly afterlife for spent audio hardware).

My options (of course) were to swap it, and £150, for a reconditioned equivalent (which would have only a three month warranty) or buy a new one. Reluctantly and sadly (the old feller had been a fortieth birthday present from My Lovely Wife, *weep*) I bought a new one.

The old one sat on my desk while I thought about sending it off to one of those repair firms you see on the web: if they couldn't fix it they said, they'd buy it for the parts. Fine.

I got on with listening to the new one, and more importantly, with Christmas and New Year.

Weeks passed.....

And then....

And then, I don't know why but something made me plug it in. The Apple logo appeared, it lit, nothing wheezed or whirred: it worked. It worked!!!

But this was a false and cruel alarm.

Two days later, it died again.

I went back on the web, trawled the blogs and the chat forums, and this time the solution I found was brilliant! audacious! - and as it turns out, permanent!

If you have a busted iPod that responds to nothing and you seriously think it may be buggered and you have nothing else to lose - GIVE IT A REALLY GOOD WHACK ON A DESK.

This I did. The iPod is reborn. And so far, it shows no signs of dying again.

Read the thrilling testimonies of many who have done this with success here.

21st century technology my arse!