Sudden problems with ipod sync.

My OS is XP Pro. I have an extensive music library (over 70 gig) that is growing by the week. I have had an ipod (160gig classic) since Dec 07 and all has synced and updated no problems till early March.
On a regular update (about 200 new tracks) suddenly the ipod went in to recovery on ejection. Since then all diagnostics have been done (on ipod/drives/OS etc etc etc) and all are fine. On numerous further attempts to sync, the ipod always crashes on ejection after 32gig. Before that amount, ie 31.87 gig(on ejection), it works fine. 1 byte over and it goes in to recovery on ejection.
Having discovered XP/FAT32(the ipod disc format) can only work with up to 32gig on a partiton, my only conclusion is that suddenly my OS is treating the ipod as a partition. My computer has been rolled back (sys restore) to its state before this problem and I have even re installed XP but all to no avail. I suspect it may have been an XP auto update patch that has caused this or my library folder somehow is being read as FAT32 even though it is on NTFS disk drive.
If this is the case then any idea/s as to how I can solve this/get my OS and computer back to reading the ipod as an external drive as it used to???!!! Or failing that any way of checking how it is reading the library? I have done everything possible this last 6 weeks and all advice followed shows no problems with ipod, ipod hard drive, my C drive etc etc etc. Am reaching the desperation stage...!!

 

That is really weird. Have you tried to uninstall iTunes and reinstall it? Try it and see if it corrects the problem. Back up everything in your iTune Library first, iTunes is a little strange.

Now put the iPod in Disk Mode. Toggle the hold button on then off, press and hold the menu and the select button (double check this part) for around 6-8 seconds, the Apple screen will appear. Release and then press and hold the select and play button until the disc mode screen appears. Now plug the ipod into the computer.

Did this work????

Didn't work, lets remove iTunes completely

Uninstall it again. Then go to Windows Task Managar and stop iTunesHelper and iPodService if they are there. Go to program files and delete anything in the iPod folder and the iTunes folder.

Now go to "Run" and type "%appdata%" and click on OK. Empty everthing in the Apple folder (this is a trick I use to downgrade iPods).

Reboot and reinstall iTunes.

Try disc mode again.