Creative Commons License photo credit:
Creative Commons License photo credit: Gonzalo Baeza HernándezCesar Mascarenhas

AND WE CAN’T RESTORE IT.

The following is a cautionary tale about the perils of opening a Pandora’s box of technology without knowing what’s locked inside.

My son brought his IPod Touch home after hanging out at a friend’s house, and it was behaving very badly. The screen was scrolling code, specifically “BSD root: mdo, major 2, minor1.” Looked pretty bad to me. (Yeah, I know, some of you have already diagnosed the problem –but I just wasn’t THERE yet, and had to figure it out the loooooong way.)

I asked my son what he’d been doing right before it happened. His buddy was trying to download screensavers for him. OK. Whatever. Stuff appears on my kids’ IPods — music, tv shows, monster dunks on You Tube — and I assume they know what they’re doing. After all, they’re young. They’re supposed to know how to do this stuff.

Anyway. . . My first assumption was that the little darlings had managed to download a virus.

So I tried to hook the IPod up to ITunes, and ITunes pretended the Touch didn’t exist. The BSD error just stayed on the screen. Well. That little experiment was the limit of my know-how. “It’s beyond me,” I confessed. No one was surprised.

I told my older son to figure it out. He looked at me like I was crazy. “Well, what? Can’t you at least try?” I said.

“Mom. I’d only do what you just did. That things fu.. . I mean, jacked up.” He looked meaningfully at me. “Duuude.”

Well, he’s the closest thing in the family to a computer geek, so I figured we were going to have to outsource work on this BSD error.

Considering the fact that the Touch was only four months old, I was calm. I remembered that my mom had bought a three-year service plan for $75.00 from Target when she bought the IPod Touch for her beloved grandson’s birthday.

So my first move was to call the number Target provided with the service plan. I spoke with a Target service representative named Kimberly. Very friendly. I told her about the BSD error on the IPod Touch screen, and then she told me that she was going to connect me to Apple support, since the Touch is still under its year-long Apple warranty.

I was connected to an Apple support guy. I told him that Target had transferred me. “Yeah,” he said. “They don’t want to have to deal with it if they don’t have to.” I figured. “But here at Apple we’re always happy to help.”

“Good, ’cause I need it.”

I told him about the BSD error we were seeing on the IPod Touch screen.

“Uh Oh. Sounds like it could have been hacked by third party system.”

I told him about the attempt to download screensavers.

“Wow, yeah.” he said. “And, unfortunately, if a device has been hacked, it voids the Apple IPod warranty.” Of course. Apple doesn’t want to have to replace gadgets that are being used for nefarious non-Apple purposes.

My service rep had hope that we could restore the device over the phone, though. He had me unplug the ITouch from the USB cable, and power it off by holding the power button and the home button at the same time. Then I held the home button down while re-attaching the Touch to the USB cable. This little bit of magic pulled up a screen showing an arrow pointing towards the ITunes symbol. My service rep got pretty excited. He then walked me through restoring the ITouch on ITunes (this means that ITunes wipes out everything on the Touch and then installs the most recent software on the device). I have to admit I was getting pretty excited, as well. It looked like I’d be able to restore the IPod!

What a hero I’d be if my son came home from school, and I could tell him his Mama had saved his IPod Touch.

We got to the end of the restore session.

And got this message: “This IPod cannot be restored.”

F*******k!

“Hmmmm. That’s not good.” The Apple service rep was bummed.

All he could do at that point was set me up to ship the IPod to an Apple service center, so the technicians could look at it. If they decide it’s been hacked, we’re screwed. The best we can do at that point is purchase a new IPod Touch for $149.00 (plus shipping) under the Auto-Warranty Blah Blah. So he’s arranged for a shipping box to be delivered to me — I can ship the Touch off and await news of its fate. At least they’re paying the shipping.

I decided to call Target back. After all, we DO have the extended service plan with them. That should count for something, right? If Apple can’t help me (i. e. replace the FUBAR IPod), maybe Target can?

Somehow, I got Kimberly back on the phone. I reminded her about the BSD error and what was going on with our device, and explained that Apple’s IPod warranty is void if they determine our Touch was hacked. She put me on hold while she consulted her extended service plan bible for reference to hacking.

When she got back on the line, she told me that Target’s extended service plan covers only what Apple’s warranty covers.

What?

“OK, so you really can’t help me any more than Apple can in year one of your extended service plan, then. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, the service plan only covers what the Apple warranty covers.”

“Then wouldn’t it make sense that my three years with YOU should start after Apple’s one year warranty expires?”

“No, you have to purchase it within 90 days of the product purchase.”

“And it doesn’t do anything for me that Apple won’t do in the first year?”

“Our service plan covers everything in Apple’s warranty, and nothing else.”

“Does that seem like kind of a rip-off to you?”

She didn’t answer.

I got off the phone. I had been mainlining coffee as I learned, the long and slow and painful way, that my son’s IPod Touch was potentially jacked up beyond repair.

I went to work out.

When I returned, I was refreshed and energized. I had decided, somewhere between level 9 and 10 on the stairmaster, that I was going to tackle this problem myself. Online! I’d get help from geek blogs, You Tube geeks, any geeks.

I went to Google. In the course of my searches, I was able to INFER that ZiPhone was the source of our IPod Touch troubles. What is ZiPhone supposed to do? Designed for the IPhone, ZiPhone is supposed to liberate it from the restrictive clutches of Apple technology, that’s what! This process is known as the jailbreak. The ZiPhone Jailbreak. It allows the IPhone to advantage of third party fun stuff outside of the Apple goodies. I found out also that the that ZiPhone can also liberate/jailbreak the IPod Touch. Unfortunately, ZiPhone appeared to have liberated OUR device from usability. My suspicion was confirmed when my son got home and I asked him what he and his buddy were using when his IPod went crazy.

“He was showing me how to use ZiPhone to get screensavers. He used it for his IPhone.” Yeah.

So much for the ZiPhone jailbreak.

Undeterred, I visited several You Tube and blog tutorials that described how to restore our IPod Touch. All involved the holding down of power and home keys to power off the device and then power it back on. Only now, the same “BSD” screen comes on no matter how many times I power on and off. About a hundred times. . . and counting.

Aaaaaargh.

So it’s 8:00PM, and I’m done with Operation IPod Rescue for now.

Time to clear my head with a glass of wine. And I’ll raise my glass in cheers.

Cheers to Apple for the technology that spurns all others (and the warranty to back it up!); cheers to Target for a surreally stupid service plan (and for ripping off my mom); and cheers to ZiPhone for their guerilla liberation tactics (understood well by geeks, but not so well by your average Mama).

Update:

The Ipod Touch sat idle for several weeks before I could bring myself back to it.

One night, the sons and I decided to try to get it working.  I looked up fixes on youtube, and WOW! found a fix that worked!

The Ipod Touch was restored and I got to take all the credit for it — what a feather that was in my technological cap.