rockbox boots then freezes after HDD replacement/install on iPod 5th Gen 80gig

[JH]

I have an IPod 5th Gen. Video 80 gig player w. rockbox installed
Never have had to use iTunes

HDD failed and I had a Toshiba 220+ gig compatible drive I had bought for an iRiver and could never get it to work, so

Had someone who knows what he’s doing replace battery and install the drive with hopes drive would work in iPod with it did, sort of...

Computer recognized drive
After reformatting to fat32, tried installing rockbox
Got following message
Error reading partition table possibly not an iPod

Message appears on iPod saying use iTunes to restore
first had to install iTunes and get it to restore iPod to factory settings
Did restore
Player recognized; serial number etc in iTunes

Still not able to use auto install for Rockbox
Same message
Error reading partition table possibly not an iPod

then tried manual Rockbox install but
Able to install only after using ipodpatcher.exe

Finally,
Unit successfully booted into Rockbox
then.
No cursors working
Not able to navigate

Still not able to use rockbox auto install, with same message:  Error reading partition table possibly not an iPod

Disconnecting usb gives message "error accessing player control file"
(doesn’t seem to be one) there is no file or directory for it
Also,
don’t seem to be able to boot into iTunes or
turn player off w/o its immediately restarting into Rockbox

anybody have a clue on how to get this to work?
would hate to have to use iTunes
...not to mention most of my files are ogg vorbis format

Update:  removed rockbox completely.  part of problem now looks like hardware as the controls don't work in iTunes either.  Maybe it was damaged when replacing HDD or not reassembled correctly.  Don't think there is any solution to this.  Not sure why I had the other problems as they don't seem to be related to this one.

[rbhawaii]

did you try to do a restore in itunes?