The above problem is with my work PC, the iPod is working fine on my home PC under Firewire where it has received all my music and has been formatted for windows.

I have a 60Gb Ipod Photo Attached to my Workplace Dell Dimension (Windows XP Home SP2, 1.7Ghz, 256MB Ram). My iPod appears in the device manager when plugged in and can be seen on the Safely Remove Hardware button as ?Apple Computer_Inc. iPod IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device? under ?disk drives?. It does not appear in the Computer Management dialogue under Storage/Disk Management and does not appear in My Computer with a drive letter. It isn?t seen by iTunes when it?s plugged in.

I first installed the iPod with a USB2.0 card and it wasn?t recognised at all either by itunes or windows. I tried many times removing and reinstalling the iPod/iTunes, removing and reinstalling the usb2.0 card, removing and reinstalling all other USB devices on the pc and only installing the iPod. None of which worked. Again, it was seen in the device manager but nowhere else.

I bought a second lead and a second USB2.0 Card, repeated the above without success.

I gave up on usb2.0, removed the card and purchased a Firewire card which installed OK and then proceeded to carry out a clean re-install of the iPod . All went well, iTunes saw the iPod and all the songs on it and it was recognized by Windows as a new removable disk drive, I opened the drive in windows explorer and could access and open the files.

Following this installation, iTunes froze and whilst it showed ?safe to disconnect? the iPod still showed the red ?do not disconnect? sign. Unable to revive iTunes I clicked ?safely remove hardware? and unplugged the iPod when instructed. Neither iTunes nor My computer have recognised the iPod since, however, it shows as a device in device manager and otherwise behaves just like a correctly functioning device allowing you to safely remove.

Having Googled for solutions over the last 2 weeks it would appear that this is a common problem for which Apple have little advice other than to restart your PC, or return the iPod for repair. :-(

As the main excuse I gave my wife for spending so much on this gadget was that I could easily and portably back up my home and office files ?think of the money I?ll save not having to buy a laptop!? its future is looking positively shaky.

Despite all of the above I still love the thing and want to get it working with windows.