Welcome!
A few procedural notes first:
Your thread title is pretty bad. Something more informative like "iTunes doesn't recognize my iPod" would help a lot. Many folks breeze over threads with skimpy titles like yours because they don't see anything interesting in the title.
It's always helpful to provide as much significant information as possible in a question. It's impossible to tell right off whether you're using a Mac or a PC-and the issue could be different for the different platforms.
Now, on to the question itself. Are you using a Mac or a PC? A PC won't see an iPod as an iPod until the iPod installer has been run-it's a driver that iTunes needs in order to be able to use the iPod at all.
And overall, what's your setup? What computer, OS version, etc. are you using? How are you connecting the iPod to the computer?