Syncing to iTunes 11 - or not

The frustration! ITunes 11 is an awful change for so many reasons, not least of which it has made me spend hours trying to get the **** working in a vaguely useful way. My current issue is that I cannot get my Classic 160Gb to sync - iTunes does all the funny whirling circles and says it is "starting to sync", but on the iPod it just shows it as connected, and nothing happens. I have left it overnight, I have done the 5R's, I have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes, all of iTunes components etc., I have now (against my better judgement) restored to factory settings, I have gone to manual update, to auto update, but am now sitting with an empty iPod, connected to my PC and iTunes telling me it is syncing... Delighted to here what next.......