iTunes thinks my iPad is an iPhone

Although I'm based in New Zealand (where the iPad is not officially available at this stage), a friend in the USA recently sent me a 3G/64GB iPad as a gift. The device is lovely, as I knew it would be, but it's essentially useless to me at the moment because iTunes will no longer recognize it as an iPad - it thinks it's an iPhone. Unfortunately, when iTunes thinks an iPad is an iPhone, one of the things it does is delete all iPad-specific applications from the device, *including their data*. I lost my complimentary copy of "Winnie the Pooh" when this happened, which is a nuisance, because the store won't let me download it again.

Anyway, the broader problem is that as long as this is happening, I cannot sync the iPad. iTunes did recognize the iPad as an iPad a couple of times initially, but now it will no longer do so at all - it always detects it as an iPhone. The only solution when this happens is to yank the USB cable before it attempts to sync.

To save wasting a whole lot of peoples' time, I have already trawled these forums and am aware that a number of people are experiencing this problem, although none quite as seriously as I am, I think. To date, in my attempts to fix the problem I have -

* Tried plugging the iPad into different USB ports on the PC directly.
* Tried different dock cables
* Rebooted the PC
* Rebooted the iPad
* Reinstalled iTunes completely from scratch

and for the record:

* iTunes 9.1.1.12
* Windows XP SP3 with all current patches up-to-date
* 4GB RAM, tons free, and more than 180GB free space on the system volume
* The system is completely clean (no malware, no viruses). And yes, I'm sure.

I'm reluctant to wipe and reinitialize the iPad because during one of the times I successfully connected with it, I got all my apps and music installed on it (I also have an iPhone 3GS/32GB that I sync on the same PC).

I've seen suggestions that I should disconnect all other USB devices from the PC, but this simply isn't feasible - I use USB mouse/keyboard. I have stripped all other USB devices out though, and it made no difference.

Please understand that the problem here is not that the device does not show up in iTunes - it shows up just fine: it's just that iTunes thinks it's an iPhone instead of an iPad. Also, the iPad itself is working just fine - no problems at all - I believe the problem to be in iTunes and the way it's determining the device type. Interestingly, iTunes does get the correct serial number and IMEI number for the device, so it seems bizarre to me that it can't tell what it is.

I haven't seen any resolutions posted here, and haven't been able to find anything anywhere else either, so I'm not even sure if Apple are aware of the problem (since I have read from time to time here that they don't necessarily read postings to these forums). If anyone can offer any further suggestions, I'd be grateful - I love the idea of the iPad, but for as long as I can't sync with it, it's really not much more than a lovely piece of industrial design sitting on my desk.

Thanks in advance for any assistance... Incidentally, I'm a software developer and have no problem tinkering around inside the software innards of things if it helps.

-- David