Reformatting killed my ipod

Due to virut, I recently had to reformat my laptop (DELL Inspiron 6400). Despite the dark ages into which the infection had dragged my computer, my ipod was absolutely tip-top right up to the end. I reformatted and started again and everything seems fine. Yet, the onyl issue is that itunes is not picking up my ipod anymore.
Now this has been a nightmare for me for the past two to three weeks, i've been spending every waking hoour trying to solve it. I've sought help from Apple over the phone and in store, but they're no help, especially since i'm out of warranty. All the forums i've used had yielded suggestion after suggestion but nothing has cured it. The thing that i keep trying to impress is that it is the restore of the laptop that i am SURE has done this. But nobody seems to be able to define what's happened. The ipod wasn't connected when i restored, so how can it have affected it/done this?
My laptop picks up the ipod, it's just itunes that won't see it, and it won't let me reformat the thing.

People, including the Apple 'Genius' team, just seem to want to condemn it to 'ipod heaven' and declare it as redundant, or they want me to fork out over £100 to have the hard drive replaced. I could do this but i don't want to do that until somebody definitively tells me it's the only and surest solution. Particularly when i just feel like something has happened in restore that's done this.

I'd say it's an iTunes problem...have you tried uninstalling and then reinstalling iTunes?

Louis

Dozens of times, literally. I've tried my girlfriend's ipod in the laptop and it recognises it fine, it's just mine. It's not being recognised on other PCs now too.

Based on that, I'd say that you have an iPod problem that has nothing to do with reformatting or anything that occurred on your system.

<<The thing that i keep trying to impress is that it is the restore of the laptop that i am SURE has done this.>>

Not sure how you conclude that. Restoring takes the system back to "when sold" status...I don't see the impact that could have on either an attached or unattached device that is not part of original equipment.

Louis

Well then it appears we're dealing with a coincidence of breathtaking proportions because I sync'd my ipod to my itunes library the same day I restored, then tried it directly after restore and it wouldn't work.

Youngest78, I had a iPod Classic 60GB, and found after upgrading my iTunes to version 9, I could no longer sync. This sync failure eventually led me to attempt re-format of my iPod, and this failed also. I spent over one solid day trying everything I know to fix this problem, but ended up turning the iPod into a very expensiver paperweight.
I thought about buying a new iPod touch, but when I learned that Apple purposely broke sync with the new iTunes 9 to prevent the Palm devices from syncing, I decided against ever buying another Apple product.
I went out and bought a 20GB Zune HD Touch, and could not be happier!\
Thank you Apple.

Hi i use my ipod as a external hdd because the screen is cracked. I am always adding and deleting files on there and would love to format it every now and again but there is 1 file preventing me from doing it and its the AUTORUN.INF file because if i get rid of that the computer wont be able to reconize the ipod so yoy prob deleted that file when you formatted. I could be wrong thou.. I would try using a m8s ipod and copy and paste that file to your desktop then connect your ipod go to computer look for your ipod then drop the file AUTORUN.INF (from your m8s computer) into your root folder of your ipod. Just my 2 cents..

No dont listen to me after re-reading your question i see you formatted just your computer and not your ipod. My bad