iTunes 9 and trashing iPod classics

In case, you’re wondering what the hell this is all about. Link.
The short version is that iTunes 9 is killing iPods, mainly iPod classics but there have been reports of dud Nanos as well and a mate reports a dud Shuffle. My sister is one of the unlucky people and her video iPod has stopped working. I promised her that I’d have a look online to see if any solutions were available. There’s plenty of anger & frustration in the Apple Support forums. It’s not definite and I’m waiting on my sister to test it but a possible solution was suggested and I’ve summarised it below. My sister tested it last night and got it working after some time.

• You need to find a computer with iTunes 8 installed or even better, a computer with no iTunes at all.
• If there’s no iTunes on the machine, install iTunes 8, which can be found here. You’re bound to have a friend or relative who hasn’t updated their copy of iTunes. Look for technophobes!
• You could try uninstalling iTunes 9 and then installing iTunes 8 but apparently it’s difficult to remove it fully.
• When you find a suitable machine, whatever you do, do not allow it to upgrade to iTunes 9.
• You need to disable “automatic sync” and you do this from edit>preferences and then the devices tab.
• Put the iPod in “disc mode”.
• Then select “update”. This takes a while. It took my sister 2 hours.
• Now you have the task of copying your music library to that machine. It’s tedious but if it saves your music collection, it’ll be worth it.

Some info on on the whole process here (and where original credit is due for this method before my sister tested it and I added her feedback).
Good luck and feel free to use the comments section to leave feedback, suggestions or just have a good rant.