One of the things that users of the second generation iPod Touch are the external speakers. With the ability to listen to the device through your headphones, and have the speakers play loudly and crystal-clear even with no headphones inserted into the jack, this is one very cool of the iPod Touch for sure. But these too, can sometimes experience problems and if you’re like Marian who recently wrote into us with this problem, it can be very frustrating indeed. The most common problem with the iPod Touch external speakers is that they sometimes suddenly stop working. So, as is happening with Marian, if you plug your headphones in, you can listen to all your music, games, videos, and everything else on the iPod Touch. But, take those headphones out and there’s nothing. What do you do?

Of course, try resetting your iPod Touch by pressing the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time. This is a pretty standard fix for most things that go wrong with the iPod Touch and before you go ahead and try anything else, this might solve your problem. If however, it doesn’t, then the little headphone control inside your iPod Touch is probably stuck.

Inside of your iPod Touch, there’s a tiny little controller that gets pushed over when the headphones are in, and comes back out when the headphones are not. This tells the iPod Touch what mode you’re in, and how you want to listen to your iPod. But sometimes, that controller gets pushed in when you insert your headphone jack, and it doesn’t slide back out when you pull the jack out. The only real solution is to put your headphone jack in a couple of times and then take it out. Continue doing this several times and see if that helps the problem.

Unfortunately if this still doesn’t fix the problem with your iPod Touch’s external speakers, you might have to send it in to Apple to have it repaired.