I'm having a similar problem to one Sixrivers had some time back:
Media Center is crashing each time I connect my iPOD. I was using the most current version of Media Center (10.0.173). When I click the devices icon, it shows an "F" drive, so it "sees" an ipod. When I click the ipod icone, I get an error: Media Core has encountered a problem...
I tried upgrading to the latest 11 beta and have the same problem. It asked if I wanted to recognize the extra drive as an IPOD, then the same message appeared.
I recently received a new 3G ipod b/c my battery died and it was still under warranty. When I upgraded the software, I had to reinstall Itunes. I subsequently uninstalled Itunes, and I'm wondering if that messed anything up? When I tried to eject my ipod from itunes it said that it couldn't because the drive was in use by another application, but I could eject it directly from windows. MC was not open at the time. I went into msconfig and disabled anything that started with itunes....
Any ideas? Is it possible that Itunes wrote something in a registry file somewhere that is causing this? or maybe since it would not eject from itunes MC still thinks its connected there? I can post the exact error tonight when I get home if that will help.
Thanks. -dmk