IPod Nano, Windows, and USB driver quirkiness question

Question

Hey all,
I recently helped someone who was suffering from two separate, show-stopping iPod/iTunes problems to get things into such a state that they could actually make use of both. Things seem to be working fine, though one of our solutions seems to me to be a bit less than optimal.
For the sake of providing as much information as possible, the first problem (though likely unrelated) was the infamous vanishing iTunes installation. We solved this by using the ctrl-alt-delete trick on an iTunes 4.9 installation (that is, by ending all of the install processes when the installation-ending error message shows up.) Okay, that's not the best solution, but it seems to be all that we can do for now.
The main concern, however, is with the iPod USB driver, and a problem that began with the formatting of the iPod. I can see that at least a few people have had this problem, but here it is for the sake of it:
The iPod installation software would state that the iPod needed to be formated, and then proceed to sit for a very long time, "waiting for iPod," until it would eventually fail. We solved this using the second technique (uninstalling the iPod USB driver) outlined by Paul Green7 in this thread: William Brame, "Initial formatting of iPod Nano", 02:49pm Sep 22, 2005 CDT
After doing this, we ran the iPod setup software again, and it told us that the iPod didn't need to be formatted. Obviously this was rather confusing, but upon loading up iTunes, it proved to be true. It appeared as an actual drive in My Computer, and it showed up properly as a 4gb iPod which songs could be copied to without a hitch.
That is, until the computer was rebooted. After a reboot, the iPod would only be recognized once again as a "USB Mass Storage Device," would not appear in My Computer, and indeed iTunes failed to recognize it as anything other than a 360gb storage device of some unknown sort.
So, what we found was that every time the computer was rebooted, the driver needed to be uninstalled again, and when Windows booted again the iPod would be properly recognized.
Now, as I said, this leaves things in a working, if far less than ideal, state. Can anyone think of a more proper fix for this? It seems to me that we've only partially addressed the problem here, and I can't help but think that this may not be the best state to leave things in.
Also, if nothing else, is there any possibility of ill effects resulting from our currently-employed solution? As far as I can tell, the worst thing about it is that it's merely bothersome, but then, I've had difficult understanding these problems in the first place.
That said, if anyone can offer any advice, it would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

The key to your problem is more than likely the 360GB storage device. This is a symptom of having either network drives or an external hard drive attached to your computer, and Windows confusing them with the iPod. The solution is to reassign the iPod's drive letter. See this:
Strange iPod behavior