Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. Please choose the appropriate forum for this topic. Thank you. Hey everybody,

I'm right now living in Atlanta as an exchange student for Germany for one year and bought myself an G4 40 GB iPod at the 18th September because I saved up some money to get a real nice mp3 Player. I was really happy with my iPod until the day before yesterday.

Thats what happend (sry for long story but I know details are important with problems like that):

- I connected my iPod to my host families new iBook (Mac OS X 10.3, 512 RAM)
- The iPod didn't appear in the Finder but displayed the "Do not connect" Text
- After waiting 10-15 min and looking at google I listened if the Hard Drive was spinning or not and disconnected it since that wasn't the case.
- After a couple of seconds my iPod went back to the menu (like it usally does if ejecting didn't work and I have to disconnect)
- Then I connected my iPod again and suddenly I got 2 Icons in the Finder (?!)
- So I just clicked eject on one of them
- After that both of the iPod Icon's disappeard and an Folder Icon with my iPod's name appeard in finder
- In the folder where the subfolders of my iPod but each of them was empty
- I hit eject to eject the folder and it worked so I got in the main menu and tested if I could play a song (worked)
- Then I restarted my iPod and the Hard Drive started to make bad noises (Starting spinning, CLICK, Spinning, CLICK, Spinning, CLICK!) and the Folder with the Exclamation Icon appeared.
- After that I googeld for the problem where I was suggested to RESTORE my iPod with the Updater Software.
- I did as told but at like 95% of the Restoring the Program quit with an Unexpected Error Message.
- I did it again, same thing happend, third time still didn't work --> back to googel
- Next thing I found was formating the iPod with the Disk Utitilty Tool
- I tried that but it gave me an: "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)" Message
- The next thing I found was triyng to use Disk Warrior to repair the Hard Drive.
- I started Disk Warrior and it seemed to work, but after 10 hours not getting any farther and a frozen Warrior I made the decision to quit it. At that point the real trouble begun.
- Now the iPod restarted (Apple Logo) and started the evil noise again, SPIIIIN, CLICK, SPIIIN, CLICK, ... (belive me it's a really frightning sound coming from a 400$ Device :( )
- Then it desplayed the Folder with the exclamation point for a little while and restarts again, makes bad noises, folder, restart, noises, folder, restart, ...

So basically it emptied it's own battery by doing that and there was nothing I could do about. I tried to set it in DISK MODE which works (its displayed on screen), but when connected to Computer no program (updater, itunes, finder, disk warrior, disk utitilities, etc.) can see it and after 20-30 seconds it restarts and goes back to its loop.

The other thing that works is the diagnostic mode, but all tests related to the hard drive causing the iPod to get stuck in a loop of the bad noises until i manually restart it (after 2-3 hours) ...

For all of you iPod lovers that read this story and didn't get a heart attack I would be interested if this should be covered in my 1-year-limited-warranty, since my 90 Days warrenty ended like ~20 days ago (!!!) or I have to pay 249$ !?!?

Every comment on this is highly appriciated!

Thank you

Felix Geisend??rfer