My Computer Died and I wasn't able to dissassociate my Ipod from Itunes

Question

So, the motherboard in my old toshiba fraged on me and I lost everything. Time passed and a couple years later, I find my ipod sitting in my file cabinet and think, "Hey, I should really start using this thing again." Much to my surprise, all of my songs were there, but when I tried to hook up to Itunes, the software tells me, "Hey, your Ipod is associated with another computer. Please disassociate it with that one first before using it with this one". It also gives me the option of erasing all of the songs and starting over (I have a good amount of purchaced songs on there) or add purchased songs to the ipod and have no access to the songs from my old computer. I also noticed that my username on the Ipod differs from the user name I have for Itunes (the user name on my Ipod doesn't exist in the Apple database).
How do I disassociate my Ipod with a version of Itunes that no longer exists?
Thanks
-Scott

Answer 1

It could be that you have inadvertently imported these CDs into iTunes as part of a compilation. If so, the artists won't show in the artists menu on the iPod.
To check, highlight the tracks on one of the offending artists CDs in iTunes, right click and select "get info". This brings up a multiple song info window, and from there you can check if you have 'yes' in the box marked "part of a compilation".
If you have, select 'no' instead and click 'ok'. Do this with any CD that has this issue. This will alter the info in iTunes, and you should then connect your iPod and synchronize the changes.
The problem arises because the information contained on the Gracenote CD Data Base (where iTunes gets all it's album/artist/track info from), is sometimes incorrect. It can show CDs as compilations when in fact they are not.
You should also check that the songs have album name info in their ID tags.
See: Some songs don't show under artist on my iPod.
Once you add a second album name for that artist even for a single song, ALL the rest of the songs should now show up under that artist, even those without album names.