Recently. I started having troubles with my Apple iPod Nano 2nd generation, 8GB (black). I didn’t have a clue what happened at first. I took it out of sleep mode and I got this strange white screen.

I didn’t hear any sounds as well because I disabled all the clicksounds etc. I used to experience some hangups before with some older firmware versions so I dediced to give the ipod a hard reset, switching on and of the hold button and then pushing menu+select.

rebooting the ipod

a working LCD, showing the ipod menu

Remarkably, it rebooted and the menu was backup again. I was happy! Untill I decided to put it into sleep mode and put it back on again. WTF! Again a white screen. My iTunes was still able to see the device and I was able to copy files to and from it.
So I thought, OK, lets reinstall the firmware, backup all my mp3s and wish for glory. I was proven wrong. The device repeatedly gives me the so called ‘White Screen of Death‘. I found this term/description during my Google quest for solutions.


I decided to get a little deeper into the problem. A lot of people were saying that it was the LCD that was broken but that made no sense. The LCD was working perfectly! I even managed to put the iPod into software debug mode (ipod diagnostics). To get into debug/diagnostics mode; reboot the ipod (hold on/off, menu+select) and before the apple logo appears, press select and LEFT, your iPod should now start debug mode. The menu the tech savvy people use to determine the problems your iPod might have. All tests ran fine.

ipod diagnostics menu (debug mode)

iPod though, after rebooting, Still the white screen of death.

the infamous “White Screen of Death“

All sound is working, you just have to know your menu by heart or hard reset your device EVERY time it goes into sleep mode. Of course my 1yr warranty has expired, Apple is not admitting any problems and I’m stuck with this really expensive 8GB pendrive. Because I see no other use for the device than that.

The only thing I haven’t tried yet is to restore the ipod manually and unluckily, I think rockbox or those other opensource music solutions don’t fit on the nano 2nd generation, otherwise I would have tried that because I believe this is an Apple software problem causing the device to suddenly malfunction.  If you know otherwhise, please let me know! Or you encountered a similar problem, have a solution that worked for you, have any contacts in Apple that are willingly to send me a new one (the new 4th. generation will do guys!) or want to rant about the fast product cycle of Apple iPods and how much they basically suck at providing customer support in these cases, you are welcome to comment on my blog!

The full flickr set of images you can find here