My dad took his computer to Best Buy And they will fix it.
If you want to pay their price they'll fix anything.
BTW, if he wants to get all of his music from the iPod back to his laptop there will be some hoops to jump through. Apple doesn't provide a solution to go from iPod to computer, only the the way, DRM and all.
I know a couple of cheap Mac solutions, no Windows solutions off the top of my head.