Make new friends but keep the old?

I have two old, old ipods (one of which I bought at a pawn shop just to see if it'd work) that both only show up as "device with removable storage" for 1 second when I unplug them from the usb port. My iphone updates just fine, but I want to update music on the ol' ipod which holds way more of course. They both WILL connect when plugged into a different pc, so it's not a hardware issue on that end. I've un/reinstalled itunes a TON already, also my computer is a pretty hot mess and had a virus awhile ago. Really the only reason I have it is to keep and update music. Any ideas, for the love of god? Also "the software required for communicating with ipods and mobile phones was not installed correctly. Do you want itunes to try to repair this for you?" Comes up only in safe mode, but the option doesn't help. And.. what else? They won't show up either in disk mode. I think that's everything. Could my antivirus be interfearing with the ipods and not the iphone? And why is everything horrible? Because in an unrelated incident my iphone was grievously injured in a farming accident today.