Apple Mobile Device Bug, iPhone/iPod touch "recieving invalid response" error..

Well, today I woke up to a bit of a headache today. As soon as I was out of bed I tried to sync my iPhone (as always), and got an "receiving invalid response error", then I tried my iPod Touch, only to get the same error message. So, with ringing in my ears, I started a dreaded google search for the error message, and found this.

Now, I didn't want to lose my music ratings, view count, and other meta data that I've been building up for years. And I could have exported the library (and hopefully that would save the iTunes meta data), but my library is huge, so I would've had to buy another external HD, which is never a good solution to a software problem.

So, I simply did the following to save my library and solve the problem:

1. Uninstall "Apple Mobile Device Support" only.
2. Download the iTunes installer
3. Run the iTunes installer.

Note: I was using iTunes 8.0.0.35, iPhone & iPod Touch 2.1 when I received these errors, and was able to download the installer for same iTunes version.