what happens when you plug your ipod into someone else's computer?

[gisia13]

I plugged my ipod into my friend's computer the other day to try to get a song from her iTunes but the only option that came up was to have every song on my ipod replaced by the song i wanted from my friend. After canceling the action, the computer froze and my ipod was still attached. i had to restart the computer (w/ my ipod still attached) before the "Do Not Disconnect" message would go away on my ipod, and now all of my friend's iTunes songs show a (!) symbol and wont play unless she manually locates each file. she's got over 2,000 songs. please help, or at least let me know what went wrong. what happens when you plug your ipod into someone else's computer? does it screw everything up on iTunes? help!
thanks...

[giskard22]

There's no good reason that her iTunes library would get screwed up just by you connecting your iPod. I'm not sure how long you waited while the computer appeared to freeze, but it's possible it was going to finish whatever it was doing without you restarting. Whatever did happen, it's likely the forced restart is what made her music library go crazy.

Your friend can follow these instructions to rebuild her library: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93313

You can only copy songs from multiple computers to one iPod if the iPod is in manual mode. I'm not going to give more information because I know the moderators on this forum don't appreciate us posting instructions on how to make illegal copies of music.

Normally, there's no catastrophe when you plug your iPod into another computer. You just click 'no' and iTunes goes about its business. You do have to 'eject' your iPod though using the button in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window.