Apple has released a new tool, the iPod shuffle Reset Utility, that is designed to restore the original iPod shuffle and resolve a variety of problems with the portable media players.

The restore process completely erases all music and data on iPod shuffle and reinstalls software version 1.1.4.

These are the issues that the utility addresses:

• With the iPod shuffle switched on, pressing the Play button will cause orange (amber) and green LEDs to flash for a few seconds, and the unit will not play any music, nor can you sync music to it from iTunes.
• On a Windows PC, iPod shuffle will appear in My Computer as a “Removable Disk,” however the iPod shuffle volume will not mount correctly. The unit is listed in Device Manager under “Disk Drives” as “Apple iPod USB Device.”
• On a Mac, the unit will only be recognized in Apple System Profiler under Hardware -> USB and will not appear or mount in the Finder.
• When attempting to restore, the unit may not be recognized at all. However, if it is recognized, the restore may fail with an error dialog “Firmware update failure. Disk write error” or another error. It may take 3 restore attempts before the error appears. Note: iPod shuffle may take several minutes to be recognized.

The iPod shuffle Reset Utility is only for First Generation 512 MB and 1 GB iPod shuffle.

via Apple