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Old 09-06-2010, 07:43 PM   #1
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Downloaded and installed the latest version of iTunes. When I launched it every song had an exclamation mark beside it, and when you click on the song it says file could not be found.

I assume the songs are still filed somewhere, but how do I fix this? I don't want to have to rip 12,000 songs again.

Why do new versions of iTunes screw-up your file directories?
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Old 09-06-2010, 08:51 PM   #2
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There might be an easier way, but this is how I deal with that issue.

Select all the songs that are missing and remove then from the library. Since it is all your songs, then it is easy. Then in file menu, choose add folder to library, and select your itunes folder, or wherever your music is stored. Chances are, since you don't know where the music is, it will be located in your c:\Documents and Settings\<user.name>My Documents\Music\itunes (for windows XP) or C:\User\<username>\Music\itunes (for Vista or Windows 7). It will readd, and get album art etc.

I wish you could just add a song and it would figure out that it was a duplicate of a song already in there, so you didn't have to manually erase songs that somehow got added twice. Maybe 10 will do this, but I have not had the experience to be sure.
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Old 09-06-2010, 10:16 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rathji View Post
There might be an easier way, but this is how I deal with that issue.

Select all the songs that are missing and remove then from the library. Since it is all your songs, then it is easy. Then in file menu, choose add folder to library, and select your itunes folder, or wherever your music is stored. Chances are, since you don't know where the music is, it will be located in your c:\Documents and Settings\<user.name>My Documents\Music\itunes (for windows XP) or C:\User\<username>\Music\itunes (for Vista or Windows 7). It will readd, and get album art etc.

I wish you could just add a song and it would figure out that it was a duplicate of a song already in there, so you didn't have to manually erase songs that somehow got added twice. Maybe 10 will do this, but I have not had the experience to be sure.
That kind of worked - but it only found a small percentage of my albums - where are the rest?
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Old 09-06-2010, 10:25 PM   #4
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Quote:
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That kind of worked - but it only found a small percentage of my albums - where are the rest?
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20015337-263.html

Apple has released iTunes 10 for Windows and Mac, which brings a number of new features to the program including a new icon (finally!), a hybrid column view to prevent repetitive album listings, and a new social network for music called Ping.

Before applying the update, be sure to have a full, bootable, and restorable backup of your system that you can use to revert any changes made when installing the program. In the past there have been issues with people losing their libraries, missing items, or having synchronization issues with various mobile devices.
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Old 09-06-2010, 10:52 PM   #5
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So you're effed? I know when I switched my hard-drives I was hooped because all my songs were on one hard-drive and it wouldn't find them. Then when I tried to switch it wouldn't let me and I had to re-add them all. Hopefully that isn't the case for you (re-adding them all).
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Old 09-07-2010, 08:14 AM   #6
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Quote:
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That kind of worked - but it only found a small percentage of my albums - where are the rest?
Might need to search your hard drive for them. I assume that even if iTunes is buggy enough to mess up your library it wouldn't physically remove Gigabytes worth of data on a whim. I assume then that your music is just located on another place on your drive, or another drive all together.

You have a couple options.

First, I would search your hard drive for audio files. Enter '*.MP3' or '*.AAC' as your search parameters and it should point you to where some of your files are. Make sure you include external, or secondary hard drives and all their partitions if they exist.

If those searches return nothing and if you have a set up a backup of your data, created by Windows Backup (Windows Vista or 7) you could restore the iTunes folder to the point right before you did the install. I personally have never done a data restore from it, but it seems like it should be pretty straight forward.

Control Panel --> Backup and Restore. Then you would go through the options to select the folder to restore.

NOTE: If this backup restore works like any other version of NTBackup I have used, if you restore the folder it will just overwrite the old folder, so I would just rename the old one to be sure you don't lose anything before you do the restore.
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Old 09-07-2010, 10:25 AM   #7
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This has happened to me when moving iTunes libraries between machines / OSes. iTunes should prompt you to browse for the missing file, then use that location as the basis for finding other files. Works well on my library cause it's about 95% in the same parent folder.
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Old 09-07-2010, 12:46 PM   #8
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iTunes Support thinks the latest install must have erased most of song library or actual song files. Only 10% of the songs seem to be in the iTunes folder now, and they don't think it would be elsewhere in the computer.

I think all I can do is:

a) use third party software to transfer songs from iPod back to iTunes (how about this? http://www.icopybot.com/); or

b) try and restore computer to an earlier date before the new software was installed.

Seems crazy that iTunes would screw up my library like that.
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Old 09-07-2010, 12:58 PM   #9
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I assume there are no other mp3 files located anywhere else on your computer?

Sharepod will transfer it back. I dismissed that as an option because I rarely have my entire music library on my iPod to make room for TV
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Old 09-07-2010, 01:19 PM   #10
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I still hate the new icon...
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Old 09-07-2010, 01:22 PM   #11
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Your library and the physical song files are 2 different things. The library is just a database of song information like the files location.

If you go to your iTunes folder, you'll see a file called iTunes Music Library.xml. This is an xml copy of the library database for other applications to use. Open this file with IE and do a search for one of the songs where iTunes says unknown location. Look at the Location tag to see where it thinks the file should be. Go to that location in Windows Explorer and see if there are any songs there.

This is what a songs info looks like in the xml

PHP Code:
<dict>
            <
key>Track ID</key><integer>1870</integer>
            <
key>Name</key><string>Award Tour</string>
            <
key>Artist</key><string>A Tribe Called Quest</string>
            <
key>Album</key><string>Midnight Marauders</string>
            <
key>Genre</key><string>Hip Hop/Rap</string>
            <
key>Kind</key><string>MPEG audio file</string>
            <
key>Size</key><integer>3765569</integer>
            <
key>Total Time</key><integer>226690</integer>
            <
key>Track Number</key><integer>3</integer>
            <
key>Year</key><integer>1993</integer>
            <
key>Date Modified</key><date>2008-08-10T22:07:48Z</date>
            <
key>Date Added</key><date>2006-09-16T20:00:31Z</date>
            <
key>Bit Rate</key><integer>128</integer>
            <
key>Sample Rate</key><integer>44100</integer>
            <
key>Play Count</key><integer>10</integer>
            <
key>Play Date</key><integer>3322101767</integer>
            <
key>Play Date UTC</key><date>2009-04-09T12:02:47Z</date>
            <
key>Rating</key><integer>100</integer>
            <
key>Album Rating</key><integer>100</integer>
            <
key>Album Rating Computed</key><true/>
            <
key>Artwork Count</key><integer>1</integer>
            <
key>Sort Artist</key><string>Tribe Called Quest</string>
            <
key>Persistent ID</key><string>80B9A3690CAF8D8B</string>
            <
key>Track Type</key><string>File</string>
            <
key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/Volumes/iomega%20red%20hdd/iTunes/A%20Tribe%20Called%20Quest/Midnight%20Marauders/03%20Award%20Tour.mp3</string>
            
<key>File Folder Count</key><integer>4</integer>
            <
key>Library Folder Count</key><integer>1</integer>
        </
dict
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Old 09-07-2010, 01:43 PM   #12
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Yes, I am confusing library and songs. I think the actual songs are gone - will try to find them later, but I thing Sharepod will be the way to go.
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Old 09-07-2010, 01:55 PM   #13
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That is complete crap.

Who releases an update to a media player, that could delete all the media it is supposed to play.

Like buying a VCR that has erases your tape every time you play it
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Old 09-07-2010, 08:48 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnes View Post
Your library and the physical song files are 2 different things. The library is just a database of song information like the files location.

If you go to your iTunes folder, you'll see a file called iTunes Music Library.xml. This is an xml copy of the library database for other applications to use. Open this file with IE and do a search for one of the songs where iTunes says unknown location. Look at the Location tag to see where it thinks the file should be. Go to that location in Windows Explorer and see if there are any songs there.

This is what a songs info looks like in the xml
Thanks. When I do that I only see what looks like the same limited list of songs that iTunes found. Looks like most of the songs got erased.

I think all I can do is use Sharepod to copy from my iPod back to iTunes.
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Old 09-07-2010, 09:49 PM   #15
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I'd just try doing a seach for every *.mp3 file on your system. See if you notice a whole bunch are located in a different directory.

Consider yourself lucky that you've a physical backup though (iPod).
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Old 09-08-2010, 09:20 AM   #16
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I'd just try doing a seach for every *.mp3 file on your system. See if you notice a whole bunch are located in a different directory.
How do you do that exactly? Are iTunes songs really mp3 files or something else?
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Old 09-08-2010, 09:22 AM   #17
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Quote:
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I assume there are no other mp3 files located anywhere else on your computer?

Sharepod will transfer it back. I dismissed that as an option because I rarely have my entire music library on my iPod to make room for TV
Sharepod can't find my iPod. I can't enable disk mode in iTunes because I manually manage my music.

I should never upgrade iTunes again. What a hassle!
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Old 09-08-2010, 09:33 AM   #18
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Quote:
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Sharepod can't find my iPod. I can't enable disk mode in iTunes because I manually manage my music.

I should never upgrade iTunes again. What a hassle!
Try this program:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/IPOD-TO...ls/iDump.shtml
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Old 09-08-2010, 09:37 AM   #19
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Quote:
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How do you do that exactly? Are iTunes songs really mp3 files or something else?
Start Menu

Search

Then, depending on how you ripped your music originally you can enter (without the quotes) "*.m4a" or "*.mp3" into the file name box.

The asterisk is essentially a wildcard and will have the system find all files that are AAC's (.m4a) or MP3's (.mp3).

Most likely, the library file was corrupted during the installation. If the music files were truly erased by the installer script, Apple has a multi-billion-dollar problem on their hands which will make 'antennagate' look like small potatoes.

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Old 09-08-2010, 09:51 AM   #20
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The folder should be at least 60 GB. There is no folder in my Music or iTunes folders that big right now.
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