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• Lost: Finding the missing in iTunes

Lost: Finding the missing in iTunes

By Eliot Van Buskirk, CNET.com on 23 June 2006

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  1slipperyfish commented on 08/08/2009 20:46 Report abuse

  thanks for this i use vista and sent all of my library to the recycle bin and imported back for itunes folder, no playlists but all songs back again!!!

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  Bill2kjr commented on 20/07/2009 10:25 Report abuse

  Actually, it's quite easy to get iTunes to find all of your songs on a new Vista computer. These instructions assume you moved your iTunes Folder (library) to your new Vista computer.
  
  On your old iTunes, right click on a song and select "Get info" and check the path to your songs. For example, mine was C:/Documents and Settings/MyName/Desktop/My Tunes.
  
  When you move your songs onto your new computer, recreate that exact file path on the C: Drive. NOTE: Vista will automatically move a folder named "Documents and Settings" to "Users". Don't worry about this, it will still work. In the "Users" folder, I created a folder called "MyName", then one inside that called "Desktop" and then moved my folder of music (called "My Tunes) into that folder (recreating the path that iTunes is looking for).
  
  When I reopened iTunes, the exclamation points were gone and my problem was solved!

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  ifgone commented on 23/05/2009 07:45 Report abuse

  i agree! all my music was deleted...

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  kloi commented on 23/05/2009 07:43 Report abuse

  it didn't work. all my stuff was deleted...

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  yayaya commented on 03/11/2008 13:06 Report abuse

  Regarding the advice of setting BPM to 999, that's lousy, because the next time you sync your iPod, iTunes will sync EVERY song in your library.
  
  Better to use a program like iTunes Library Updater.

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  ctodd commented on 10/10/2008 00:50 Report abuse

  okay, this works for me, but, weirdly enough, it's ending before the entire contents of the folder are added to the library. I can see all the folders under the "My Music" folder, but I"m only getting folders A-C into the library. No message, no nothing, it just seems to randomly stop. Any thoughts?

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  Bill commented on 15/09/2008 05:42 Report abuse

  This is an old article, but I'd hardly say losing your ratings is "worth it." Can you imagine re-rating over 30,000 tracks?

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  Beebo commented on 08/03/2008 13:27 Report abuse

  If you have some computer knowledge about where your files are stored, and you have (or should I say 'had') a large music library this is the best way to restore. You do lose your playlists, play counts and ratings, but hey, you also lose the exclamation points.

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  TK8103 commented on 30/11/2007 00:37 Report abuse

  This advice worked great for me. I had spent 3 hours manually relocating songs, and I was missing 7000. I tried the method above, and was done in less than an hour.

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  leighjam commented on 21/07/2007 02:21 Report abuse

  There is a better way Highlight all the songs, get song info, then set the BPM (or another non critical field) to something wacky like 999, then click ok and just WAIT...
  Once you're done just sort by BPM (or the other field) and look for everything that is NOT 999 and delete. iTunes can't update info on files that don't exist.