Wow wow wow. deep problems with the nano now

Question

wow. i am about ready to throw this thing and i dont know why i didn't way back in January. if u look back to a post i made way back in january, about the photos not loading, well this is an even deeper problem..
okay here's the story: every day i use my ipod and sometimes it sits in my pocket for awhile till the next use. when it comes to that time to play it again, i almost always have to reset it in order to turn it on, no big deal right? pretty common. but now i'll reset it, the apple logo comes up and up pops a black and white screen reading "disk mode" at the top with a battery meter next to it, and in the main display it shows a black check mark that says OK to Disconnect.
Not only did i never put it in hard disk mode, but it completely locks up: no backlight, you cannot reset it, and there is no possible way to turn it off.
This is the 5th time straight it has done it. i am almost positive the hard drive is damaged irreparably since way back in January, when i got it. and now it may be that it is overheating and the harddrive can no longer run because the chip is so warped or whatever.
The only way to turn it off and to unfreeze it is to completely restore it every single time..
However, now that this has been happening the photo's have seemed to be working just fine. which is amazing.
i'm pretty positive that i'll be sending this monster back to either circuit city or apple.
and by the way, i found that anaphoto loaded the pictures just fine to answer the archived post in january. allthough everytime it came in contact with apple the photos would be wiped clean again.
Dell Optiplex GX240   Windows XP Pro  

Answer 1

The default for Windows Media Player is with protection turned on. Protected files need to be transferred to the player using Windows Media Player or Mediasource, otherwise the licenses won't be transferred and they won't play. Here is what I did. Very simple. I uninstalled Mediasource(the program was giving me trouble). I downloaded the free version of Musicmatch www.musicmatch.com I use Musicmatch to make mp3 files from my CDs. I use 256 kbps since I want great sound quality. This lets me put around 9 hours of music on a gig player. If I used 28 kbps I could get around 8 hours of music on the player, but the sound quality would be much lower. Once I have the mp3 files on my computer from the CDs, I attach the player and use windows explorer(right click on start, click on explore) to make a few folders(file, new, folder) on the player(one for each artist, or one for each album, or one for each type of music. Whatever makes sense to give me around 5-5 or so folders on the player). Next I copy the the mp3 files from the pc into the folders on the player using Windows Explorer(drag and drop). Very simple. If I need to move protected WMA files to the player then I could use Windows Media Player to do that.Message Edited by JK23 on 08-5-2006 08:06 PM