still reading this?
if so, I've just had basically the same problem. And after an hour of messing about, I've sorted it! Though, I'm not sure exactly why its now working, since nothing really has changed.
Plug your iPod in, open iTunes, and it won't stop. From the help menu, run diagnostics on the iPod. Is it the last of the 4 lights on the left that errors? If so, click that help button next to it. Then, just follow all of those instructions.
I did all that and it didn't help, then right at the end it tells you to disable all services and try that. That still didn't work, so I enabled the services I want to start up again and restarted (this time with iPod attached from the beginning, even before windows had started), and opened iTunes and it worked!