Thread: Ipod "White Screen of Death"

How to fix? Tried resetting. Itunes won't detect it.

You didnt say what version of the ipod you have and there are plenty other forums specialising in ipods.

Here's my 2 cents for anything that shows video:

Hidden Button Combinations
The key combinations for resetting, Disk Mode, and Diagnostic Mode
are the same on the iPod Photo as they are for the other click wheel
iPods. Hereâ??s the rundown:

Reset the iPod

Press and hold Select and Menu until you see the Apple logo on the
startup screen. Apple suggests that you plug your iPod into a power
source before doing this. Resetting is good for â??unfreezingâ?� a non-
responsive iPod. Itâ??s also the gateway command for invoking Disk
Mode and Diagnostic Mode.

Disk Mode

Reset the iPod and, when you see the Apple logo, press and hold
Select and Play. A monochrome Disk Mode screen (not backlit) will
appear. Disk Mode is useful when your iPod wonâ??t mount. This puts
the iPod into something akin to the Macâ??s FireWire Target Disk
Mode â?? it tells the iPod to mount, dammit.

Diagnostic Mode

Reset the iPod and, when you see the Apple logo, press and hold
Select and Back. Let go when you hear a beep.

Diagnostic Mode is more a curiosity than a help. It allows you to run
the kinds of tests on the iPodâ??s components that only a geek would
love. With the iPod Photo, Apple has reorganized Diagnostic Mode to
gang together similar tests. It shakes out this way:

The main screen reads iPod Diagnostics and displays SRV followed by a
date below (I assume this is the date of the iPodâ??s firmware).

Below is a list of test suites:

Memory
IO Power
Status
SysCfg
Diskmode
Reset
You can use the scroll wheel or Forward and Back buttons to move from
one suite to another. To invoke a suite or test, press Select. The
suites contain these tests:

Memory

SDRAM Clicking SDRAM takes you to a screen that lists a single
SDRAMFullTest. Click Select in this screen and the iPod tests the
internal memory chip. The screen displays SDRAM OK if the SDRAM is
indeed, okay.

Flash The iPod displays Checksum=0xE937 on my iPod when I run this
test. This test checks the deviceâ??s flash memory.

IRAM Another, more extensive, memory test. When complete the iPod
resets.

IO

Comms Three tests appear when you click Comms â?? USBTest,
FirewireTest, and Remote. Their names describe them aptly. In order
to run the first two tests successfully you must make the appropriate
connection â?? the iPodâ??s data cable must be connected to a USB port
or FireWire port for the first two tests and the iPodâ??s Remote
Control must be attached for the Remote test.

Wheel Two tests appear when you click Wheel â?? KeyTest and WheelTest.
KeyTest asks you to engage the click wheelâ??s five buttons. To pass
the WheelTest, just scroll your thumb around the wheel.

LCD Two tests here: Backlight and Color. Engaging Backlight allows
you to run through the iPodâ??s varying degrees of brightness. The
setting you leave the test with does not affect the iPodâ??s
brightness after you reset it. The Color test requires that you press
Select to see each of these colors/patterns: blue, red, green, black,
white, red to black gradient, green to black gradient, blue to black
gradient, gray to black gradient, checkerboard pattern, black, and
gray to black gradient again.

Headphonedetect Indicates whether something is plugged into the
headphone port and whether the Hold switch is on or off.

HardDrive This screen includes four tests â?? HDSpecs, HDScan,
HDSMARTData, and HDRW. The HDSpecs test provides you with the hard
driveâ??s specs (its model number and firmware revision, for example).
This test is akin to a first-, second-, or third generation iPodâ??s
Disk Scan test. The test takes several minutes, so donâ??t perform it
unless the iPod is plugged into a power source. The HDSMARTData test
provides a summary of the driveâ??s S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring,
Analysis, and Reporting Technology) information â?? the driveâ??s self-
diagnostic data. Finally, HDRW is the driveâ??s read/write test.

The HDScan test is one of the few useful-for-end-user tests. The
first three generations of iPod had a Disk Scan test that could be
invoked by resetting the iPod and holding down Back, Forward, Select,
and Menu. This key combination isnâ??t possible on click wheel iPods
and no other secret key combo has been introduced for recent iPods.
Accessing the test through Diagnostic Mode is the only way to do it.

Audio This screen leads you to two tests, Playback and Mic. Pressing
Select in the Playback test screen causes the iPod to blast a short
burst of audio. Plug a microphone with a miniplug connector into the
iPod and invoke the Mic test to record a few seconds of audio.

Power

A2Dtests This test leads to a host of power tests, battery as well as
input charging.

Sleep This screen takes you to two sleep tests â?? SleepShort and
SleepForever. Invoking SleepShort puts the iPod to sleep for a few
seconds. SleepForever shuts down the iPod.

Status

No submenus on this one. This simply tells you the LCD setting (it
should read â??Sharpâ?�), whether somethingâ??s plugged into the
headphone port, and whether the iPod is getting power from a FireWire
or USB connection.

SysCfg

Another command with no submenus. This displays the iPodâ??s serial
number, hardware version number, and Apple part number.

Diskmode

If, for some very odd reason, you canâ??t remember the button
combination for throwing your iPod into Disk Mode, you can use this
command instead.

Bit of trivia: When you access Disk Mode this way, the iPod Photo
wonâ??t display Disk Mode at the top of the screen.

Reset

Another safety net command. If youâ??d rather not press Select and
Menu to get out of Diagnostic Mode, you can invoke this command.



heres the official reset guide from apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1320?viewlocale=en_US

damn, rabbit - that's some good info right thar.

fwiw, when i get the sad mac face on my ipod and it won't play, I reboot it and give it a fucking good whack on the back. that usually works. kind of resets the needle on the record.

thx rabbit. tap - thats been my style with electronics thus far, but hasnt worked

That is insane knowledge. Sweet. H x

Whenever I get the sad face on my ipod, I reset it, and just when I hear the hard drive starting to spin up I chuck it across the room; preferably against the nearest wall. This has worked like a charm 5 times over the past two years. Also has worked for two of my friends' ipods.

The key is waiting until right when it starts to spin up the hard disk.

Wow. Talk about coming in at the right time. I just plugged my Ipod in this morning to recharge it and my computer didnt recognize it and automatically ejected it(ejected according to the ipod it was never recognized on my computer).
It then, the ipod, proceeded to keep trying to restart itself(I could hear the disk attempting to startup, stall, stop and then do the process over again).
Thanks to rabbit, the disk mode function, along with Taps advice to give it a few good whacks on the back I got it up and running in no time and good as new.

Thank you knowledgeable people.

Ipod still doesn't werk. Sooooo sad. Just bought the thing like 2 weeks ago. KI have re-formatted it, restored it, and re-synced it. I'm about to re-throw it against a re-fucking brick wall!

if you just bought it two weeks ago its still under warranty right?

yeah, warranty is like 90 days at least

You might consider checking out this option:
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY---Fix-Broken-iPod!/

It's a little scary busting open your ipod and probably scratching it a little in the process, but it works and beats a broken ipod. I've had to do this to mine a couple of times now and it's still running. Each time it "crashes" I have to click on Restore when I plug it back into my desk top and the drive is wiped clean, but it then works and I can re-load everything. I'll curious to hear if you do this and if it works for you.
Good luck.