Attn: Da Gopha
I've had slightly similar symptoms on my iPod, and I believe I have (with your help) straightened everything out. I thought it might be helpful to share my adventure with you in case it helps Apple Engineering diagnose the problem.
I purchased my 40GB iPod at the beginning of December. It worked with my PC (which uses XP SP2) just fine. The only problem I could never get a handle on was that occasionally iTunes would not connect with the iPod, but it seemed that this would only happen if another user was logged into the computer as well. If I punted all the other users before connecting the iPod, iTunes would always find it. (This may seem to be a harsh methodology, but I figured it would teach the kids the "always save your work" lesson quite well.)
I thought that the connection problem might be related to the fact I was using USB. I purchased a Firewire card and it sped everything up, but it did not change the symptoms.
When 3.0.2 came out I upgraded. I'm not sure if this was the cause of my problems, but it is around this time that things started acting up even more.
The first sign of problems was when ejection of the iPod from iTunes stopped working properly. It work work OK from iTunes' point of view, but the iPod itself would remain on the "do not remove" screen. I now believe the reason it was doing this was because Windows Explorer was looking at the file system or something, but I didn't clue into that until just yesterday. So, I got into the habit of disconnecting the iPod while this screen was visible. There were never any problems directly apparent when doing this, but it may have been the cause of what follows.
The second sign of problems was when connecting the iPod would give "unspecified error (-50)". When this happened I would have to disconnect the iPod, restart iTunes, and try again. Or sometimes I would disconnect the iPod, quit iTunes, connect the iPod, and let Windows start iTunes. Often one of these two would usually work, but any information on what tunes I had played since the last time I connected would be lost.
On Friday other signs started showing up. Windows would tell me I had a corrupted file on the iPod drive. There appeared to be a lot more disk space used on the iPod than iTunes would indicate. Downloading songs wouldn't "stick" and I would have to do it again. iTunes would think the iPod was a new one when I connected it. Changing the iPod preferences (such as to re-enable disk usage) could not be saved.
I read your messages in this thread last night and decided that my symptoms were similar enough that I would try your recommendations. I restored the software to 3.0.1, but that didn't help. I ran chkdsk, but it reported no problems. So, now I had no music on the iPod and still had the symptoms.
And then everything went completely wonky. The file system was completely corrupt. I could not open the Calendar folder. The iPod_Control folder had lots of crap in it: filenames with heiroglyphic characters, creation dates from the Star Trek era, etc. Time for the last resort: chkdsk/f.
Running chkdsk/f found gigabytes of problems: the FOUND.000 folder had something like 1500 recovered files in it. All folders created by the iPod software were gone. I deleted the recovered files, and ran the 3.0.1 updater again. It worked without a hiccup, recreating all the interesting folders.
I then ran iTunes, and it couldn't see the iPod. As it was now very late, and I was getting tired of this futzing around, I attributed this symptom to the version of iTunes I was running (4.7.1.30) requiring 3.0.2. I refreshed the iPod to 3.0.2, and connected it. iTunes found it, synched all my tunes, and now everything is working fine.
I think. It has only been a few hours since I finished.
I'm not sure if this problem is related to the one being discussed in this thread. It is entirely possible that all my problems arose because of my lack of understanding of how to deal
