How I fixed my iPod nano

Please note: this fix requires doing things to your iPod that you wouldn’t normally do. Even though I’m certain they’re safe, I can’t be held responsible if you knacker it following these instructions!

How frustrating. After almost a year’s loyal service, I went to charge up my 3G iPod nano before a trip, only to find it wasn’t working. It would turn on, but after about 5 seconds of showing the menu, it would reset itself. Over and over again.

I blamed the 1.1.3 firmware, which I installed a few days ago. I hadn’t used my iPod since then, so probably wouldn’t have noticed the problem. Oh well, I thought, a factory reset should sort it.

But how to do a factory reset? It would appear the only way of doing so, is from within iTunes. Sadly, since my iPod didn’t stay running long enough for iTunes to even realise it was plugged in, that was no answer. Unlike many devices, the nano doesn’t have a little hole with a paper-clip-able reset button in it, so that was no option either. All I could find on the internet were how to soft-rest it (hold down Menu and Select for a few seconds), which didn’t help (it could soft-reset all by itself anyway!), and how to stop it reset looping (let the battery drain).

So having left it looping for a few days, the battery was finally flat. I plugged it in, turned it on, and… it reset itself again.

Then I was pointed to this page. It shows how to enter the nano’s diagnostics menu! You reset the iPod, then immediately hold down Reverse and Select, keeping them held down until you get a screen like this:

As interesting as it is (and different to the one described in the link above), none of the options listed actually helped in this instance. There isn’t a factory reset here.

Then I had a thought – if Menu and Select does something, and Reverse and Select does something else, what about the other combinations? I tried Forward and Select, but that did nothing. However – Play/Pause and Select (held down immediately following a reset) did this:

Which not only didn’t reset after 5 seconds, but also allowed iTunes to sync again, and let me perform a factory reset! It seems that particular button combination forces the iPod into GUI-less disk mode. Excellent!

I set about resyncing all my music and podcasts and stuff, and all seemed well. I realised that, by default, some things are not automatically synced – games, videos, contacts and calendars in particular. So I added those to the sync lists and they copied over to the iPod.

Disaster! The resetting recurred!

I repeated the whole process. Wiped the iPod, resynced my music, then podcasts, then contacts, then calendars… and reset. It was the calendar syncing that screws it up! I put the iPod back in forced disk mode, removed the calendars from the sync, and resynced. It worked! Put the calendars back, it resets!

I have no idea why this is happening, although my upgrade of SyncMate recently did cause some event duplication in my calendar that required a Time Machine restore, so perhaps that introduced something. It doesn’t really matter as dates and stuff aren’t necessary on my iPod, so for the time being I’ve just disabled them.

Anyway, hopefully this might help others who are tearing their hair out with iPod nano resets!