ok so about a month ago my ipod killed itself. I had the sad ipod face AND the folder with exclamation mark flashing on the screen. it sucked. when i came back to college i left it at home in a drawer, but after a few weeks I read about people taking the hard drive out and shaking them and that would sometimes fix their problems, so I had it mailed to me here to try and bring it back to life. When it first died I'd tried to reformat 5 or 6 times and nothing worked, but I thought I'd give it one more try. and it worked. No dismantling or anything. It just fixed itself. Its been running fine for about 4 days of heavy use. For once, just forgetting about your problems and doing nothing about them finally payed off. So to everyone else with dead ipods, I hope yours also turn out to be zombies.