My songs say they're transferring but aren't on the iPod.

Question

I just bought my iPod yesterday- it's a 60GB iPod video. I bought a PCMCIA USB2.0 card so I could hook it up to my laptop and got my iTunes library all set to transfer. I plugged the iPod into the card and, after some hiccups, got it to recognize it and didn't even see the "high-speed usb device plugged into non-high-speed slot" message that it gave me when I tried it in the 1.1 slot in the back. So far, so good.
It started synching up with the iTunes library, which is cool cuz that's what I wanted. It ran for about half an hour, loading maybe 2.5 GB of the 45.5 GB total library, before my computer overheated (a common problem with the HP Pavillion ze1250, just a word of warning). Still, it's a start, I figured. I took the iPod out of the handy felt case that I stashed it in because I'm pathologically afraid of a four-hundred dollar toy getting scratched and went to look at my new music library-
and saw that it only had about 750mb of music. Alphabetically speaking, iTunes had told me that I had transferred all the way down to Bob Dylan and my iPod hardly even touched on the Afghan Whigs.
I was confused but it was late and I figured I'd just try it again. I hooked up the iPod to the computer again, rebooted, and took it from where it left off. iTunes told me that the iPod had 2.5GB of songs, but kept readjusting that number- 1.9, then 1.5, then 1.2, then 750mb, at which point it started transferring songs again.
It went on again seemingly without a hitch- an hour or so of transferring and I was back around 4GB. Satisfied, I went to bed.
When I woke up this morning, I checked the iPod all excited and saw that, yet again, it was at 750mb, exactly where it had been after the first failed transferring session.
It still tells me that the songs are being transferred, but I've no idea where they are. I've no idea what it's actually doing or how to fix it. Please help me, Apple-people. I am not one of you, but I would like to learn.
--d
60GB iPod video   Windows XP  

Answer 1

Any advice is appreciated, but unfortunately I checked both of those things almost immediately after the problem and it was nothing so simple. It told me that the iPod's capacity was at 40+GB full, which would mean that it had transferred pretty much my whole iTunes library, but I still got nothing on the actual device. I think it's going back to Best Buy later tonight, and Apple and I shall forever part ways, no hard feelings.
--d