Very Low Battery - Not Charging

I just fixed it!!!!!!

OK. Here's what you do:

Put the iPod in disk mode with the center/play button combo and just as the screen flashes to life, plug in your cable. Mine went into disk mode and it was recognized by iTunes and the computer. It started to sync and when that was finished, I left it to charge. I ejected it from iTunes and all seems OK.

I did have it plugged into a 1000mw/port USB hub. I don't know if that makes a difference but that's what I did.

Good luck!

Bill

Message was edited by: Britaniola

the above described function is working very well, so centre button and play pressed together, once it pops up, connect the cable and it's charging.

Thanks to the finder above, saved me a trip to service centre and lot's of frustration

This is happening to me as well.

5th Gen 60 iPod. 2 years 2 months old. Has always been in disk mode. Connects to Windows XP with a 2.0 USB.

Started about a month ago. It was recomemnded to me to let my battery completely drain once a month to help prolong battery life. So when my iPod shut down from low battery I pluged it into my computer as I do all the time. It showed the "Very Low Battery Please wait" with the swirling circle under it. After a minute or so the iPod restarted showing the bright apple logo. The logo remained on the iPod for a while and never got to the "Do not disconnect" logo.

I do not know how long the apple logo was on before I disconnected it from my computer. It was long enough where it should have recieved some charge to the battery, but after unpluging it, it still did not have a charge. I would not allow my iPod to continue connecting to my computer with the apple logo on the screen because I'm afraid of screen burn.

So I plugged my iPod into a wall charger (Griffin) and it started to charge.

Although I have a walkaround to the problem, I do not know what caused this to start happening. If I did not already own a wall charger I don't know how I would have gotton my iPod to charge.

Can any of the top forum users weigh in on this topic with an opinion?

Just out of curiosity, how long had you been using the Griffin charger for? Thinking more closely about it, this has only happened to me since I bought a Griffin charger. It had only had one full charge with the Griffin charger since I bought it, and that's when it 'died'.

Tim Atkinson wrote:
Just out of curiosity, how long had you been using the Griffin charger for? Thinking more closely about it, this has only happened to me since I bought a Griffin charger. It had only had one full charge with the Griffin charger since I bought it, and that's when it 'died'.

The charger was purchased about 6 months ago. I rarely used it. It was purchased by a family member to be used with his ipod. (5 Gen 60 GB exactly same as mine but 14 months younger and his Shuffle) I manage both our ipods on my computer and his does not have this issue. His iPod also has a much older software version. 1.1.?. while mine has 1.2.3.

A part of me wonders if this is the first sign of our Ipod's battery's demise. My iPod is 2 years old and I use it several hours a day. (rarely video) So perhaps they cannot take the charge from the computer as well as a wall charger anymore.

The only thing that worked for me was to charge my iPod using a wall charger not the computer's USB cable. My iPod will only charge from the USB cable if the battery is not too low.

I have tried all of the advice from previous messages and I still have problems. God knows how many times I have re-started or put in to disk mode my 5th Gen 60GB.

Thing is I don't have a problem when I disconnect the cable and restart, the iPod works fine and the battery is full. But as soon as I connect the iPod to a PC is shuts down and displays the low battery screen, then tries to reboot over and over again but still does not recover. The PC or iTunes doesn't see the connection so I'm helpless to do any more.

Could this be a error/bug in the latest iPod software that is suddenly causing these problems, which never happened before. I'm running version 1.2.3.

Any more help out there?

A previous comment lead me to my solution.
I believe the culprit is "enable disk use".
My iPod went throught a few different screens. First the low battery, then the disc mode, and finally the sad mac. I tried restoring my iPod on multiple Macs, but none of them worked. Finally I connected my iPod to my PC at work and it was able to restore it first try. I then deselected the "enable disk use" button. Next I allowed it to completely charge, then I plugged it into my Mac, it recognized it as being tied to another machine and I allowed it to re-sync.

I did a little test after the sync. I checked "enable disk use", unplugged the iPod and tried plugging it in. Everything seems to be working fine. Tonight I will let the battery run all the way down with "enable disk use" turned on and see if the problem happens again.

my solution 2.0

I have not been able to reformat my iPod on my Mac yet, I get errors everytime I try. So my iPod is still formatted for windows. Which means to updated it, I have to connect it to my PC. 😟

Last night I started my iPod playing at around 6:30 pm and I am happy to say that my battery is great! It played continuously till 2:30 pm this afternoon. I let it drain completely so when I plugged it into my MacBook Pro, it displayed the "low battery icon". After a few minutes, the icon changed to a great big, pulsing green battery and the iPod loaded in my iTunes. The interesting thing is even though I check the "enable disk use" button last night, when it loaded in iTunes, the checkbox was empty.

I hope Apple is watching this Topic and can resolve the issue quickly. It definately looks like a software problem to me.

By the way, if you're a PC user you may try plugging it into a Mac and restoring it, but I don't think PC's can read Mac formatted iPods like Mac's can read PC formatted iPods, but at least you'd be able to tell if it's dead or not.

Message was edited by: Travis Kendell1

First of all, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one having this problem.

Anyways, every time I try to use my iPod, it doesn't work at all...nothing shows up...just a black screen. I figured the battery was dead, so I plugged it into the wall and all I get is the "Please wait, very low battery" warning. It just stays like that the entire time and nothing works. I decided to dock it in my iHome, and it says it's charging and I can actually play it. I took it out of the iHome and plugged it back into the wall, and everything seemed to be fine...it was charging and I was able to listen to it. However, as soon as I unplugged it from the wall, it quit working again. The only time I ever get the "low battery" warning is when it's plugged into the wall. I really don't get it.

Another thing I just noticed is that every time I dock my iPod, it says it's charging, and as soon as I take it off, it says it's charged, and the "charged" icon will not get off the screen. I docked it again, and it said it was charging. How can it be charging if it just said it was charged a second ago?

Something is seriously wrong and I've had my iPod for 2 years now so my warranty is up. Someone please help...I am freaking out.

The battery of my ipod was very low but not dead yet. Today I connected it to charge it but the screen does not light up at all. It just blinks for like half a second every now and then. iTunes does not even recognize my iPOD. Need help really bad!!!

Hey guys! I have some news.

I'm from Brazil and I was looking for people here with the same problem, so I found a tutorial in portuguese to fix it. It says exactly the same thing that Britaniola said a few days ago, aparently this is the answer. I'll try it some other time because I have no time now and if it works I'll let you know.

Well, nothing seems to work. I tried putting into disk mode and nothing. So I went to an Apple Authorized Service Provider, the guy did something with my iPod and apparently it was working again but one day later it turned off and the problem was back. I don't know what to do anymore.

Hi. Similar problem. 30Gb, 5th Generation video. Bought used. Been using it for 2 months, no problems. Love the unit. Updated software 2/28/08. After update, tried to load more music, "very low battery" appeared while connected to computer, then error message requesting resotre. Multiple attempts to charge. Would not charge until reset 6 times and connected to A/C adapter. 36 hours later while starting to reload music, "very low battery" appears. Put back on A/C charger. Now nothing but black screen and non responsive. Do I delcare units "time of death" or should I try a battery replacement? Help.