SWMBO has IIRC a 5th generation 30Gb video ipod, anout 2 years old; it's just completely dead for no apparent reason. If you try connecting it into a PC USB port the PC reports it's malfunctioned; it won't take any charge if plugged directly into a charger. Have tried all the 'resetting' tips etc on Apple's support site etc.
So what next?
Attempt a diy repair; ie buy component(s) (which?) from somewhere (where?) and fit them myself?
you can buy batteries from Maplins complete with fitting instructions(I doubt if that will fix it though), I doubt if any thing else is available apart from a Apple repairer I had mine repaired buy Apple by a local repair shop or try these
Need to start by finding out what's at fault. You could measure the v across the battery while its on the charger (and while its off it) to see if the batt's receiving power, but I suspect its not a dead battery - if it was it would generally run direct off the charger.
Unfortunately electronics troubleshooting is neither easy nor simple. But you can check the basics, like charger output, battery function etc
Depends, my iPAQ threw a wobbly and wouldn't switch on, no normal indication of charging, wouldn't work when connected to the charger, tried soft and hard resets but it would just sit and make a quiet "click" every few seconds.
It has a Li ion battery, these have "smarts" inside them as you really don't want to overcharge 'em or discharge them too fast. Li fires are not nice and with current battery technology virtually impossible to put out as the oxygen required is already in the battery.
Anyway I just left it "on charge" and several hours later it spontaneously sprang back into life. I let it charge fully according to the display and started using it again, next day it "died" again so I just left it "on charge" again and it came back. Since then it has worked fine, >
9months.(*)
I suspect either the "smarts" got confused about the charge state of the battery or maybe the protection circuit got triggered and letting it "charge" then cycle a few times has reset one or both.
Maybe the OP can try just leaving it "on charge" for a day or three and seeing what happens.
(*) I used to power/charge it from a generic PDA holder in the car. I suspect that was the root cause of the problem as the battery would get rather hot with that. I don't do that now only use HP supplied mains charger or USB sync stand or a TomTom supplied car device intended for the Li battery in a bluetooth TomTom GPS Rx.
A colleague had a Creative MP3 player with the same problem. He tried charging it from a USB port for days but nothing happened. Finally he tried charging with a mains charger and the thing started up almost immediately! Do you have a mains charger you could try with your iPod?
I cant help but if it fails I suggest a cheaper "generic" replacement?
While we are here can anyone advise on the iTunes programmes editing capabilities? I'm a windows user and for once actually use the MS product for playing music. Seems easy to use. I have a load of language disks which SWMBO wanted on her ipod. She wants them to play in the correct order so I had to relabel all the tracks from the chaotic mess the manufacturer had made of it.
In Windows media player you can select a field, (say Genre) select all tracks and do a global change from , say, world/misc/spanish/unknown to "language lessons".
When I imported into ITunes, they sometimes reverted to original names and I couldnt find a method of changing other than a single entry at a time. Surely there must be some way? I asked this elsewhere on usenet and got messianic Apple users questioning why I wanted to do it rather than offer a solution, really put me off Apple.
The workaround is to make all changes *before* you rip the music and check in windows Explorer, then the changes stick in iTunes. Post rip changes in media player are internal to media player.
they were CDs in .cda format, I always buy CDs as they act as auto back ups. I have never seen audio CDs with such shambolic labelling. The authors name was in combinations of Micheal/Michele/Michel and Thomas/Tomas, the titles were all over the place and genre was random. The tracks were numbered inconsistently, even sometimes within a single disc. What suddenly strikes me is could they be pirated? The boxes look kosher and they came from an Amazon marketplace supplier, would anybody pirate language disks? Perhaps more likely they were migrated from other media in a unprofessional way.
There is. Select all the tracks you want to change (using Shift+click or Ctrl+click or by selecting an artist or album in the Browser (Ctrl+B). Then right-click, Get Info (that's iTunes' weird name for "Properties"), change whatever you want to change, then click OK.
I think you are right as one volume picked up some crazy totally unrelated stuff. I remember now when I ripped my CD collection I was using software that enabled me to update the database where it was wrong or lacking.
The true spirit of DIY is to extract the knowledge of the specialist, and make it available to people of ordinary intelligence and training, but whose courage and skills are sufficient for the task in hand. ;-)
"An engineer is someone who can make for sixpence, what any damn fool can make for a quid"
A late great head of a UK civil engineering firm expressed something else in similar vein "The art of civil engineering is to understand that the people who do the work, are unsophisticated, but relatively cheap: To that end the jobs they do are broken down into simple sets of rules and instructions, which, if more or less slavishly followed, allows a great work of art or engineering to be constructed by monkeys".
"rules are for the guidance of wise men, and the obedience of fools" to which I would add, and should be made by those who understand exactly what the issues are".
Sadly, these days they are made by career politicians who have never done an honest days work in their lives..
CDs don't have *any* titles stored on them, most ripping software calculates a quasi-unique ID number from the track count and durations, then uses this to read titles from gracenote/cddb/musicbrainz etc.
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