Ipod 5th gen, video 30bg, will sync/restore, won't play

I am running Windows 7, with all updates (as of 3/14/2014) have itunes 11.1.5.5 showing no available updates. When I plug into the USB port, the ipod gets recognized, Itunes starts. I can see the files on the ipod. I have reset the ipod and restored. Same problem. When I drill down to the actual file I want to listen to, it doesn't play. On the screen the icon changes from pause to the arrow for play, the index line never advances. You can hit the select button, use the scroll wheel to advance through the file, and hit play again, but no noise. There isn't noise if in the dock (which other ipods and iphones work with in the house) there is no noise if the headphones are plugged in. i was thinking harddrive, so I replaced it. couldn't get the new one to function. When the new harddrive was in the unhappy face would come up. I could force into disk mode, in hopes of restoring it, but in disk mode, neither windows and hence itunes would recognize it as an ipod. I put the old hard drive back in thinking maybe I damaged the cable, but it came right up, but with the same problem, it won't play the sounds... I replaced the Zif cable just in case, still the same...

i've sure seen lots of Ipod 5th gen video for sale on Ebay, compared to the 4th that I had, which I broke the scroll wheel cable on, but never had such problems with it. Any thoughts out there from someone who might know what it's doing? It seems weird that it loads the music files, and deletes the music files but won't play them. The only other thing I can think of perhaps is the battery too low to spin the hard drive up to play? It does seem to be a very small (physically) battery compared to the 4th gen... but it is thicker...

When I got it it was doing the low power thing, so I did all the steps to re-charge, and restore, but it won't play the files... Thanks for any thoughts!

Jesse