IPod stopped playing songs

Question

I have an iPod mini that used to work.
I linked it to another PC (and iTunes) for a few seconds and since then my ipod will not play anything.
You can see all the songs that I used to have on the ipod, and when you try to play an album it just skips through each song, just displaying the name on the ipod for about half a second, then displaying the next song, and so on.
When I look on the ipod, the available space is 3.7mb which is the max it can be, so it looks as though the actual songs on the hard drive have been deleted, but the names remain.
I have tried connecting it to my pc a number of times, have tried getting updated versions of iTunes and iPod updater, but to no avail.
Any suggestions ?

Answer 1

You may want to read the user's guide at
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPodmini(2ndGen)UserGuide.pdf
which states the following which is most likely your scenario:
Transferring Songs and Playlists to iPod mini Automatically
By default, iPod mini updates automatically when you connect it to your computer.
iTunes updates the iPod mini music library to match the songs and playlists in your
computer’s music library, transferring new songs to iPod mini and deleting songs from
iPod mini that aren’t in your music library.
You can set iPod mini to transfer only certain songs in your iTunes music library. This is
useful if you have more music on your computer than will fit on your iPod mini.
By connecting to another PC, you may have begun the update process which deletes your music first and then attempts to match what is found in iTunes on the PC you connected to... You should view your ipod mini as a hard disk storage device and check to see if there are any songs on it. I imagine if you connect back to the original PC with your iTunes account, it should hypothetically resynch it and place all your songs back onto the device if any are missing. That is if you haven't mucked up your original iTunes library.
The most common troubleshooting recommendation for ipods doesn't hurt also. That is, reset the device by switching the hold button to on and off. Then press the menu and select buttons simultaneously for 6 secs.
Good luck!
~Eric