FireWire Connections are not supported.

To summarize what's known so far: the problem appears to be cause by some third-party docking connectors, or (as in my case) connecting to a Firewire port. Once the problem has arisen it never goes away, and nothing suggested here fixes it. That includes:
- Resetting
- Letting the battery go completely flat then recharging
- Full restore including reloading firmware

Whether or not the root problem is in the iPod, Apple could be a big help here by at least acknowledging that there's a problem and figuring out what set of conditions causes it to start up. If it turns out that the root problem is in the third party connectors or cables, those manufacturers can be informed.

However the biggest problem here seems to be Apple itself. People have been reporting this fault for over a year and yet there has been no word from Apple to suggest that they're aware of it, or that they care; it's only natural to feel that Apple is hanging us out to dry now that they've got our cash, and that they may expect us to fix the problem by buying yet more replacement iPods.

In my case this will not be happening. My iPod is rapidly becoming unusable and if I don't find a fix soon I will be replacing it - but not with another iPod. Frankly, a company whose customer service consists of a forum full of customers with problems, and no Apple presence to actually help out, doesn't deserve more business.

My iPod has reached the point where it's unusable except in the car. I can't touch the controls without the Firewire message coming up, so I can't even select music to play, and I can't turn it off so the battery's flat every morning. Any word from Apple on this? No, of course not.

Apple: you provide these forums so all us suckers can talk about problems but you don't do anything to actually help in return for all the cash you rake in from us. You should be ashamed of yourselves. I see from the support site that because my 'pod is out of warranty it'd cost me $129 to get it serviced, and there's no guarantee that the problem won't come back. Sod that - I'm going to buy a Zen, or something else that doesn't have an Apple logo on it. (Oh, and the Mac that I've been planning on buying? That's out the window too, if this is an example of your support quality. I'll stick with my PC, thanks.)

I am having same problem. at the moment I can still play music from mine, but most of the time, the error message is always on the screen. occasionally I can dismiss it. I guess from reading this thread there is no real fix. Again Apple Suppport at it best. i guess I should re think switching to a mac.

I did a complete restore and now nothing happens except the Silver apple logo is on the screen and has been for about 2 hrs now. It is still connected to the computer. nothing happens when I touch the wheel.

I think I have it as bad as it can get right now. Not only can I not turn off my ipod, and it won't sleep, but now my laptop won't recognize it so I can't even sync it up. Without the sync, I can't restore it to factory settings or do many of the troubleshooting fixes that have been suggested. All this started yesterday after I received a beautiful new Bose sound dock for a huge price and now look. So what am I supposed to do now??? Pay to have my nano repaired only to have this happen again as soon as I plug it back into the Bose? I don't think so. Does this mean I can't use my ipod with anything at all? No dockers, no car plugs, nothing? Ridiculous. I have an original (1st gen?) nano and I'm wondering if this issue has been resolved with any of the more recent generation nanos? I'm really stuck on what to do right now. As things stand, the nano is pretty much useless to me. Although it does still play songs, it runs out of battery because it won't shut off. And if I can never load another song on it again then it's going to lose its charm real soon.

Yeah. This happened me yesterday too. I kept pressing center. I went through a few of the R solutions.
reseted it about 16 freaking time because of its constant freezing! So much so i got the **** manual test section. Which again told me through checking each part that the firewire connection failed.
I could listen to the ipod i could play music it was just synching it was the problem.
So i kept trying on different USB ports until finally the computer recognised it, itunes recognised it then stopped recognising then started to recognise it...
i then decided to leave it for 10 hours to charge on my xbox since resttting could skrew up the battery power a lot.
When i tried to turn it on it was frozen. It wouldn't even let me reset. When i eventually got it on battery power was fully charged. The disconnect sign came up and itunes recognised it.
One problem STILL my lock button is forever on the top left hand side of the screen. So NOW the clicker wheel isn't responding. I can put new songs on my ipod i just can't listen to them.
Isn't that great.
And by the look of things Apple will never get round to this problem if it's dateing back to May 2006. Great.

*i have the 30 GB iPod. i purchased it last Christmas and it was working absolutely perfectly until a couple of weeks ago when i started getting the "FireWire connections are not supported. To transfer songs, connect the USB cable provided" *

*i only use the USB cable that came with my iPod. I don't have a speaker set with a dock or anything of that sort. i have tried all of the "5 Rs" that Apple.com has. i have no idea what to do anymore. i bought new music a few days ago and was really excited to put it on my iPod. i didn't get the chance though, because with that notice up, it won't accept new music. It won't turn off either. i have to wait until it dies for it to go off. *

**i am still under my warranty and i plan to take it back to MacAuthority and have them either try to fix it or just get a new iPod. I'm sick of my iPod not working. **

Have you tried the basic troubleshooting steps?

Why is Apple responsible for fixing the Alpine car adapter?

It backed up and restored (everything) fine. This has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

Yes.

Sure does. If you had kept the data on your computer, the repair of your iPod would have been a snap.

I have the same problem with the firewire message and my ipod will not turn off.
I've tried reseting several times to no avail.

I've never used firewire.