I keep getting an error message when trying to restore my iPod

I have a problem with my iPod 30GB Classic of showing no music, however when I connect it to my PC, the iPod shows up in Windows as being filled with files. The other problem was that iTunes would freeze up when my iPod was connected.

I tried manually resetting the ipod by pressing the menu/center button, also putting it in disk mode, yet iTunes still freezes up.

I reformatted it which stopped Itunes from freezing up, which happen ever time I went to connect the Ipod this is good.

Itunes tells me it has detected a ipod in recovery mode and I need to restore Ipod to be able to use but when I go to restore , I get an error message saying that itunes is unable to connect to server. There is no connection problem and I am even able to get the iTunes store to pop up . But it keeps giving me this error message.

Does anyone know how to fix this ?