I am having the same problem with my daughter's iPod (video, 30 Gb). When originally purchased, she had an old (5+ years old?) hand-me-down HP computer with XP Home Edition on it. Everything installed & worked fine. Then about 5 months ago, I bought a new Dell & gave her my 2 yr old Dell (that's how it works at our house! ;-), and that's when the problems started. The Dell PC will not recognize her iPod! I have tried everything I could find, including:
- the 5 R's (Reset, Retry, Restart, Reinstall, Restore)
- using the 'Add New Hardware Wizard' & pointing the Wizard to the drivers on the iTunes installation disk
- putting the iPod in disk mode
- rebooting after putting the iPod in disk mode
- re-installing iTunes (many, many times!)
- using different USB plugs on the PC
- using a different iPod USB wire
There are probably others that I have tried that I'm forgetting, but I'm out of ideas :-( . It's not the iPod--I can still connect it to the old HP computer & it launches iTunes & recognizes her iPod just fine. It's the stupid computer! And the USB ports work fine--I can plug other things into them & they work without problems. It can't be a USB 1.1 vs. 2.0 issue--the old HP has USB 1.1 and the iPod works fine (slower, but it works). If anyone has the holy grail answer to this problem, PLEASE HELP US! Like totalpakage says, we've got a useless $300 machine.