4th generation iPod Shuffle works on one PC (Windows 7) but not another.

Question

Hi all.
My issue with the 4th gen shuffle is pretty strange, at least, from what I've read here on the forums already. My sister recieved one as a christmas present just this past year (Happy New Year, all!), and as I am the family's tech guy, I was given the task of configuring it for her use and whatnot, as she is younger.
Having owned a shuffle myself, I figured it wouldn't be all that difficult.
At first I ran into the issue of not plugging the USB cord in all the way, but being the computer-geek I am, I recognized the symptoms fairly quickly and noticed the eighth of an inch of plug still sticking out of the little hole.
Interesting, interesting. So now it was plugged in properly.. but iTunes was immediately saying it was corrupted. So, not too bad, just click restore, right?.. wrong.
The restore hangs. I google the issue. A lot of people suggest reinstalling iTunes and whatnot.. attempting a format on the iPod itself to make sure it's in Windows format.
I try many many things on this PC, only to wind up plugging the thing into another Windows 7 PC. The only difference between the two is that the other PC is running 64 bit Windows 7 as opposed to 32 bit. Strangely enough, however, the iPod functions and works perfectly on one computer and does not get recognized by Windows as a disk drive or a mountable partition on the original PC.
I discovered today that the motherboard drivers for the original PC weren't properly installed by visiting nVidia's site.. but this didn't help the problem. I also attempted to restart all of Apple's iPod services through Windows, as well as to reinstall iTunes multiple times. I disabled basically all other services running on the computer, turned off Avast antiVirus, etc.
I did try several different USB ports as well. Front ports, back ports, even the installed memory card reader has a USB port that I attempted to use to connect the iPod.. all to no avail.
The only thing I can honestly guess at this point, is, that there is some other conflicting service or background process that is totally preventing the iPod from properly being recognized by Windows, especially as multiple driver reinstalls / restarts do absolutely nothing to solve the issue. I also find it very odd that iTunes will recognize the iPod as being plugged in, but consider it corrupted despite the fact that it runs just fine on the other PC. Perhaps the major difference is, in fact, the 64 bit OS? I also find it odd, indeed, that despite it showing up in iTunes as a corrupted iPod, when I click the diagnostics button under the help menu in iTunes, it will say there is no iPod plugged in.
I am really just confused and dumbstruck by all of this, and regardless, my sister's christmas present is currently nothing more than a pink clip on button.
Please note that I have tried or looked into most if not all of the support pages pertaining to this issue. I am very much hoping there is something simple I've overlooked, or that there is some specific order in which things must be done in order to properly force Windows to recognize the device (like it does so easily with so many other devices..).

Answer 1

There is a USB printer connected to the back port of the PC. The mouse and keyboard are both PS/2.
I did attempt to reinstall the USB root drivers. After uninstalling iTunes and all the other apple software packages included, I uninstalled everything USB in Device Manager, then rebooted the PC to let Windows reinstall it all.
Reinstalling the OS -might- fix the issue, but if that were the case, it's most likely just a software conflict that can easily be fixed if I can manage to narrow the specific conflicts down. I've already essentially disabled everything with MSCONFIG except for Apple stuff, so I'm at a loss as to where to go. I've attempted the 5 Rs and all that as well, none of it seems to do the trick. I also cleared the temp folder multiple times (once per each iTunes uninstall / reinstall following the support site directions of uninstalling all the extra apple software) as well as attempted restarts of the Apple services.
One oddity I would like to point out is that if I attempt to restart the iPod service through services.msc, it will not restart. It throws the error message of "the service failed to respond in a timely fashion" or whatever. I instead have to use the windows Task Manager to manually kill the iPod process in the processes list.
I just now removed the USB printer and plugged the shuffle into the same port, but I receive the same error message in iTunes about the iPod being corrupted and it needing a restore. If I push restore, the software gets stuck in an endless loop. There are no other USB devices attached to this computer, the motherboard drivers are fully up to date from nVidia's website, and other USB devices clearly function just fine (USB memory sticks, USB printer, etc). If I use the Diagnostics option under Help in iTunes, it will claim there is no iPod connected, and, again, the iPod still does not show up in Windows Explorer under My Computer as an attached device, nor does it show up in Disk Management as a mounted partition.