Ipod erased and now its not recognised so i cant sync the songs back on

Im relatively new to iPod so I don't know that much about it. All I can really tell you is that I was charging my iPod and it came up with a message saying something about changing the settings on my iPod which I didn't want to do so I just pressed cancel. Was that a stupid thing to do? coz next time i went to listen to my iPod all of the songs had been cleared off it.
...so i went back on to itunes to try and sync the songs back on but it didnt recognise it and came up with a message saying that it can't read the contents of my iPod. I followed the instructions and went to summary in Ipod preferences and clicked restore to restore it back to factory settings.
i thought that this would fix the problem but it came up with a message saying...
"There was a problem downloading the iPod software iPod. The network connection timed out." It said something about making sure my network settings are correct and active or to try again later. Network connection? im not sure wat it means.

Can anyone help me in any way or am i doomed??