ITunes recognizes my new iPod but rejects my old iPod

Question

My old iPod's battery is just about dead. It is three years old; I will send it to Apple for a new battery.
In the meantime, I bought a new 5th generation iPod, 60 GB. It's great! Eventually the old iPod will be my work iPid and the new one wil be the home and recreation iPod.
Here's the problem. I researched using two iPods from the same copy of iTunes. In response to my questions in this forum, someone referred me to the article at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300432, "How to use multiple iPods with one computer", which I read, and which supported the idea that you can work with two iPods from one copy of iTunes.
My goal, then, was to follow Method Two as described in the article, and use two iPods from my one computer, without setting up separate user accounts for each one.
So -- I plopped in the CD that came with the new iPod, installed the latest iTunes. It had me register the new iPod by serial number.
In my copy of iTunes, my old iPod was called "Mae Sot's iPod". I set up the new iPod as "Mae Sot's New iPod".
I thought that from now on, when I plugged in my old iPod, iTunes would be able to recognize it, and when I plugged in the new one, iTunes would recognize it.
Wrong.
My copy of iTunes does great now in working with the new Ipod. But it totally rejects the old one.
When I plus in the old iPod to synch/recharge, I first get the Windows message in the lower right part of the screen with the headline, "USB device is not recognized", telling me that "One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it..."
The first time this happened, that message eventually went away, iTunes launched, and I got an error message saying there was no folder for the device.
Now when I plug in the old iPod, I just get the "USB device is not recognized..." message, and iTunes does not launch.
Any idea what is the problem?
My goal is to get iTunes to add my old iPod as a recognized device, so that I can clean the music off it and send it to Apple for a new battery.
iPod Windows XP Windows
iPod Windows
iPod     Windows
iPod     Windows

Answer 1

I've got the same problem as well. When i connect all i see is "set up your iphone" screen. It worked perfectly fine a couple of weeks back when I last synced but, doesn't sycn anymore.
Any help would be appreciated.