Ipod mini 2nd generation problem

[Sordelka]

I think this is what happened to it: my ipod got formatted (a long ago, more than a year) with the windows format tool. After that, it completely stopped working (of course).

But now, I dug it out of its box and tried to fix it....could not.

When I launch it --> it shows me a folder and says to go to apple support site.

What to do? What did it erase that it can not replace.

[scharkalvin]

Even if you had a completely blank hd, iTunes should offer to restore the ipod.
Does the iPod even show up as a storage device on your computer when plugged in?
Does it appear in the disk manager?  (If you are running Linux does it show up
in the /dev fs?)

Did you format it using iTunes, or Windows itself?  (You didn't end up with an NTFS file system on the ipod did you?)

[Chronon]

Try to put it into Disk Mode before connecting to the computer.