ITunes 10 is not recognizing my first generation iPhone. Any suggestions?

Question

I tried to sync new music to my phone tonight and iTunes no longer recognizes my phone. It used to show up as my name under devices but now it only says iPhone. I am unable to select sync iphone in the file menu as it is greyed out. I am also unable to see any information regarding my phone such as available space. This is my first time syncing since upgrading iTunes to version 10 so I wasn't sure if that is the problem. I run the diagnostics and everything checked out fine. I also restarted my phone & computer. Please help!

Answer 1

Just out of curiousity, does the iPhone show the "Connect to iTunes" graphic on-screen, or is it operational?
As a last-ditch effort you may be able to force Recovery Mode (power the phone off, hold down the home button and keep it held while plugging in to the PC, keep holding afterward until you see the "Connect to iTunes" graphic, then release). Every once in a while this doesn't work and you have to hard-reset (home button + power button) until you see the Apple logo, then keep holding only the home button while plugging in instead.
This will let you Restore in iTunes. I say "last-ditch" because Restore is the only thing this will allow you to do, and once you try this it will likely not go back to operational until you do. The Restore will wipe everything back to factory settings; you can sync apps and whatever else you have on the computer back to the iPhone but anything that has not been previously transferred to the PC will be gone.
I'm hoping someone else has some less extreme ideas for you, but maybe just general things like trying other USB ports or cables will work. Or possibly try another computer to see if you get the same "blank" result, if you are able, just don't let it sync if you do this.