I have an iPod Touch, 1st Generation, 16 GB that is jailbroken. I fully turned it off by holding the power and home buttons a few days ago and when I went to turn it back on it shows a black screen with information on it. It gets to the point where it says "Running fsck on the boot volume..." then goes on to say "Invalid directory item count (It should be 38 instead of 37)

Then after a little while it restarts the ipod, and restarts this process

I've left it on for several hours now and it just repeats this over and over.

When I plug it into the computer, itunes doesn't recognize that it is plugged in so I can't just restore it.

Please help me!

You are likely going to need to restore the iPod touch. Your filesystem is corrupted (apparently beyond the ability for the automatic fsck to fix)

Originally Posted by pandamimicom

1.This is actually really easy to do. This called a hard reboot. All you have to do is hold the home button and the power button down at the same time for 30 to 40 seconds or until you get a Apple sign on your screen. This will reboot your ipod.

This step will NOT help.
Please try to give accurate advice (or avoid giving advice at all)