Q: I accidentally unplugged my iPod from my computer while the “Do Not Disconnect” screen was showing on my iPod. Now all it does is reset itself repeatedly—it basically just keeps on resetting itself, and the iPod screen never comes up. I see the Apple logo in the middle of the screen, than it shuts off and then 2 seconds later it shows the Apple logo again and then shuts off. I have no idea what to do. Any suggestions?
– Eddie
A: In this case it sounds like the iPod’s database is corrupted and it will need to be erased and restored via iTunes before you can use it again. Ordinarily, this would involve connecting your iPod to your computer and restoring it, but since it is caught in this reboot cycle, chances are that iTunes will not be able to recognize it.
Your best bet is to attempt to force the iPod into a hardware “Disk Mode” so that iTunes will be able to detect it and you can then restore it via iTunes.
To put your iPod into disk mode, simply hold down the center button and play/pause button together when the Apple logo appears and keep holding them until the Disk Mode screen appears.
Once the iPod is in Disk Mode, connect it to your computer and iTunes should be able to detect it. It may show up normally, or iTunes may show you an error message indicating that it has detected a corrupted iPod which you need to restore. Regardless, however, you can proceed from here to restore the iPod.
Note that restoring your iPod will erase everything on it. If you’re using a fully automatic sync configuration and all of your music and other media content is in iTunes, this is not going to be a problem as you can reload it from iTunes as soon as you have finished restoring it. However, if you have content that is only stored on your iPod, you should attempt to recover this content first. See our iPod 201 article, Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer for more information on how to do this.
Once you are ready to restore your iPod, simply select it from the iTunes Devices list on the left-hand side, and click the button labelled “Restore” shown on the main Summary screen. iTunes will reformat your iPod and reinstall the latest iPod operating software on it. Once this process has completed, you can re-sync your content back onto it from your iTunes library.