At someone's recommendation (I forget who, but thanks!) I took my iPod down to my local Apple store today, and let them look at it. The problem baffled the first guy who looked at it, so he passed it off to one of their geniuses. *He* looked at it, called over someone else, and said "hey, look at this! Have you ever seen anything like this before?" and they shook their heads, checked their files, and gave me a new one. No questions, just "here." It's even the same color as my old one! What's wonderful is that today was the absolutely last day of my warranty - you betcha I bought another year's warranty for the new one! so I'm reloading all my books and podcasts on the new iPod, and grinning. -becca