I recently got this problem on my PC after doing a reinstall of Vista.

I thought I was pretty smart in copying all the settings files of itunes. But as soon as I put my iphone 2G ver2.2 my iphone media was gone and I got the itunes message that I should restore.

I suppose you can restore but you will lose everyting on your iphone.

this thread also had this problem http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/f128/24847-2.htm but I had to delete another directory.

In putty i used this command

rm -R /private/var/mobile/Media

Then when I connected it again to itunes - itunes accepts it as a new iphone and as far as I can see so far I have not lost anything from my iphone.

Hi

You say you backup the Vista before restoring, did you copy the itunes music folder located in My Music? If you did you should be able to just put it back in the correct location and get your library back again.

If you didn't you for safety you could try extracting the music directly from the phone with something like..

i-FunBox | File Manager and Hi-Speed Transfer Tool for iPhone and iPhone 3G (iFunBox Download Page)