iphone wont sync to itunes

my ihpone 4 wont sync to itunes. so this is what happened. i was in itunes and everything was good and my phone was synced, then i was updating podcasts and they were downloading and not yet synced and i went to take some pictures off my phone. keep in mind that im using a PC and so i go into my computer and i notice that my iphone icon isn't there. so i check devices and its not even in there. so i google it and i saw that i need to uninstall my drivers and then just plug my phone in and everything will be fine. so i still have itunes opened because its downloading podcasts and so i do this, plug it back in and everything seems to work fine. i go about my business and then i go to sync my podcasts and i notice that my phone isn't even showing up as connected so i unplug it and plug it back in. still nothing, so i exit itunes and reopen it and plug in my phone, nothing. then i do that with the phone plugged in and nothing. so i google it and they recommend to stop and then start the iphone mobile device service and then open itunes and plug in the phone. so i do that and nothing. ok... so i restart my computer and the phone and still nothing. its recognized in mycomputer but nothing for itunes. i've considered reinstalling itunes but that's a bit of a hassle with reconfiguring everything. is there anything else that i can do before having to take that step?

thank you.