Installing Windows is still the PITA. Also, front USB ports and cables can be troublesome.
Try the rear USB port the cable the iPod came with HOWEVER, the yellow exclamation mark must be dealt with.
For that you need to get the drivers for motherboard and maybe USB from Dell.com. Use your service tag to get those.
Last weekend my hard drive crashed on my Dell Inspiron 560. I had all of my songs, a mix of itunes and Amazon purchases, backed up to a USB flash drive, so no worries there. I successfully loaded a new hard drive and re-installed Windows 7, along with the drivers and utilities. Next I downloaded iTunes and re-loaded all of my songs and re-created playlists. The problem arose when I finally decided to sync my iPod with my "new" library.
I receive a pop up telling me that it has been detected but not identified. I've reset both computer and Nano and tried again without luck. I've uninstalled and re-installed all Apple (QUicktime, iTunes, Bonjour, etc) software several times...but no luck. I've plugged in other USB devices and they seem to be fine. In fact I plugged in my wife's very old iPod shuffle and it was fine. Just not my Nano or my daughter's iPod (not sure which generation hers is)
I've found a few solutions pointing to various methods, but still no luck. I located the Apple Device USB Driver by right clicking on "Computer" from the control panel, selecting "Device Manager", and then scrolling down to USB section. Since it had a yellow exclamation mark I uninstalled it since it as I read in several articles/posts. When I scanned hardware for updates though, it doesn't seem to re-install it. After that if I go back and see yellow exclamation in the same section for "USB Mass Storage Device", but no mention of anything Apple.
As best I can tell, I have followed all of the advice here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204095
I don't know what else to do here and am hoping to avoid re-installing the OS and drivers again unless anyone thinks that's the only way to go at this point. I did find some tip for taking a screen shot by using Home + "Wake/Sleep" and then finding the section identifying the device as a phone, but I must not be doing something right because I couldn't even find the "Wake/Sleep" button on my keyboard, or maybe that's referencing iPhone and not iPod.
Very frustrated...anyone know what else to try? I'm to the point of just re-installing Windows 7 again and re-loading all of the drivers again hoping that perhaps i just missed something when doing it last weekend. One last thing to note, since re-loading Windows 7 I have not been able to download the latest version/service pack, so don't know if that could be the culprit or not
Dell Inspiron 560, Windows 7, iPod Nano 7th Gen

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