ipod shuffle freezes up itunes and I can't restore it

I recently replaced the hard drive on my computer and reinstalled itunes. I have several children with ipods, so they have all plugged in their ipods and synced it with the new version of itunes and the "new" library since it was reinstalled. Two of my sons have ipod shuffles, 2nd generation. When I plugged in one of them it said several error messages, such as this device cannot be synced properly an unknown error occurred. So, I managed to get his ipod restored yesterday, and he was able to add songs and sync his ipod. However, when he plugged it in today it came up saying "verifying max's ipod" and then it froze up itunes. It did this yesterday as well, but I was able to restore it, today I click on the settings tab and it is frozen,, so I can't even get into the settings to restore it. I tried running the ipod reset utility, but it did nothing and I also tried some appleipod.bat file, which also did not help. If anyone is able to give helpful suggestions you will make an 11-year-old boy very happy, and his mother will be less frustrated.