Ipod songs not recognized

Question

I plugged my ipod into a friends itunes to get a cd she had and after i ejected and turned my ipod back on, my ipod library had all of her music and none of mine. None of her music played (i put on shuffle songs and the song names just flashed by because none were valid) and the only tracks to work on my ipod were the ones from the CD i had meant to download to my ipod. Her itunes was not on automatic update (she had manually manage music selected). I reset my ipod and later plugged my ipod into my own computer where my ipod still showed up as my friends ipod with all of her library, except once again none of the songs worked (all had the little exclamation points next to them). I opened my Ipod control folder while it was plugged into my itunes and saw that my original library was in the folder I was able to play some of the songs from the ipod control folder. How do I correct this problem (without restoring the ipod and erasing whatever music i have on the ipod)? Also only about 25% of the 4000+ ipod songs are stored on my harddrive itunes folder which is working fine.

Answer 1

It would appear that the iPod hard drive or iPod software has become corrupt. This doesn't mean that the songs are not on your iPod, hence the fact that the iPod reports used space and iTunes may show them. I've never seen a plausible explanation for why it does this.
You should restore the iPod and then reload the songs from iTunes.