iPod classic: itunes tells me that my ipod is in recovery mody and needs to be restored. It then says that when it is restored that it will appear in the left sidebar however it never does. any ideas why??

I haven't used my iPod in a few months so I charged it up, updated my itunes and everything was going fine. However when I connected the iPod to the computer and went into itunes, a message kept popping up telling me my iPod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored. I clicked on the restore option then a message telling me my ipod had been restored popped up, it also said that my iPod would appear on the left sidebar of itunes once it had restarted and to leave it connected to the computer. The apple symbol appeared on the iPod and it appeared to be restarting. While I waited for the iPod to show up in itunes it turned itself on, after another few minutes the original message popped up telling me that the iPod needs to be restored. I have tried this many times but to no avail. I have also carried out numerous procedures said to solve this problem including changing the letter of the iPod drive but still nothing works!!! I don't know what else to do!! Has any experienced the same problem? Any ideas on how to get this working??