syncing and restoring problems - please help
I updated my 1st Gen iPhone to 2.0 on the day it was released. Since then I have purchased a bunch of programs and have synced/backed-up my iPhone many times. I never tried restoring until today. I decided to restore because my iPhone and iTunes have been acting strangely whenever I sync. First off, my iPhone never opens iTunes when I plug it in. I have to open iTunes myself. And then sometimes my iPhone won't show up in my iTunes but usually it does. But it will start to sync and then poof the syncing on iTunes stops, the iPhone no longer appears in iTunes and yet my iPhone is showing the sync screen. I have to slide to stop the sync and try again. Sometimes when I sync, iTunes will appear to be syncing but after a minute my iPhone returns to its home screen. So I can't tell if it's syncing or not. I thought with the update to iTunes that things might improve but no luck. Still doesn't work. I also have had the same problem someone mentioned above of having application updates noted on my iPhone even though iTunes supposedly downloaded and installed them all. I agree - never download or update software directly on the iPhone. It simply doesn't do it well. I should also mention that my iTunes runs a backup of the iPhone almost every time I try to sync, which takes forever.
So I decided it's time I tried to restore to see if that will help. I did so and it took a really long time (over an hour) and I was encouraged that it even though it took a long time, it never stopped mid-restore and the iPhone screen kept showing the Restore in Progress screen. But once the first try was done, my iTunes told me that one of the applications could not be updated because of some error. My iPhone was back to functioning with everything installed but it was showing one application update on the App Store icon. But the biggest problem is my iTunes wants to restore it again. I can either choose to setup a new iPhone or restore from the last backup. So, since it's not a new phone, I chose restore again and it has been taking forever to install. Before I ran the install I tried replugging my iPhone to see if it would sync instead of offering to restore, but no luck. Am I suppose to choose "Set up a new phone"?
Any advice would be most appreciated.