Q: skull apple icon

Did he Jail break it?

Most Likely Its Jailbroken,

definately. It is "Green Poison" jailbreak. The skull apple is their logo.

The device has lost its warranty by doing that.

And because it is now installed a OS that nobody knows what has been changed with the crack (jailbreaks are cracked open filesystems, changed internals, changed apps,settings,configuration data ) , nobody can help here. Although unlikely the device can have malware in it, surely. Apple closes its OS for that particular reason : to limit the access to the internals by the apps installed on it. A jailbroken device with apps installed gives access to everything. Bad guys can mis-use this , naturally.

Hopefully he finds help with his cracked device somewhere on the internet. Not at Apple . Every store would send him away or charge money to restore the device back to official OS ( if that is even possible ).

No worries. Plug it into itunes and press restore. iTunes will save it for ya

Just go into iTunes and highlight the iPod icon when it appears and on the right side press the Restore button and it will restore the iPod to factory settings. Good as new.

My son did this to hsi ipod and iTunes doesnt recognize the device

Try UDF mode to make iTunes recognize it.

Plug your iPod to the Computer. And when the OS of your iPod clash (When you see that Skull Apple Icon) Hold down the Home & Power buttons until the screen off then release only the Power button & keep holding the Home button ultil your Computer recognize it. Then open iTunes. Now, the iTunes should recognize your iPod.

Hi , I have the same problem and I tried to do it by your instructions but my Iphone doesnt respond on nothing. I dont know what to do because I cant restore it when computer doesnt recognize it. Dont you have any advice for me ? thank you

If

Try DFU mode and then restore               

How to put iPod touch / iPhone into DFU mode « Karthik's scribblings

does not work then likely the iPod is bricked

I know this is an old post but your comment helped me fix an ipod 2g my family member messed with I could not for the life of me get it into DFU but your instructions to start the DFU enter process from the point where the apple logo went to the greenpoison skull was just the tip/info I needed... I was able to enter DFU by following that suggestion and restore the Ipod. TYVM I hope my replying to your comment will help someone else fix their device