Q: what happened to my playlists? I just loaded version 11.0.4.4 and all my playlists and songs uploaded from CDs to iTunes disapeared!!!!

The Previous iTunes Libraries folder will normally be inside <User's Music>\iTunes, not the media folder.

Where is your iTunes library folder located? Have you changed profiles? Did the problem occur at random or during an iTunes update?

tt2

It's not working for me...when i try to rename the iTunes Library (Corrupt) i get an window telling me 'an unexpected error is keeping me from renaming the file, blah blah blah...'  Error 0x80070570.

Look like I'll have rebuild my playlists again... 

Close iTunes first....

tt2

Success! 

I decided to try something else...I ran Disk Utility, repaired the volumes and rebooted again.  Then i used the renaming process in the itunes folder and voila! 

All my playlists and folders are back to normal! 

What a bunch of great Apple community helpers we have here.      :]

.

Thanks again for the help!   Many thanks!

The files just appear as if they are there.. but when you try to play the old episodes.. they cannot locate the files

The lost episodes need to be restored from a backup... If you don't have a backup then the best you can do is resubscribe and download where the past episodes are available.

tt2

Hello turingtest2 -

I've tried to follow your instructions but am still doing something wrong.  I've found the previous library backup, with the extension .itl, copied and pasted it to my desktop.  Then renamed it and dragged it to the itunes folder on my desktop.  Open itunes and nothing's there.  Have I dragged it to the wrong folder?  Thank you.

If you don't see the .itl extension don't add it, otherwise you're creating a file called iTunes Library.itl.itl and iTunes will create a new blank iTunes Library.itl alongside it and use that.

The iTunes folder you're moving the restored library file to is normally C:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes.

tt2

That itunes folder is the same folder the previous library came from, right?  So I've copied, pasted and renamed that previous library, and moved it back to the itunes folder.  It still doesn't appear.  Perhaps in that folder I should delete the file called "iTunes Music Library" because that's what the program automatically opens?

susan8231 wrote:

 

That itunes folder is the same folder the previous library came from, right?

Yes...

So I've copied, pasted and renamed that previous library, and moved it back to the itunes folder.  It still doesn't appear.  Perhaps in that folder I should delete the file called "iTunes Music Library" because that's what the program automatically opens?

That will be iTunes Music Library.xml, iTunes creates this for third party software to read. How many .itl files in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder and are they all of comparable size? You may need to go back to an earlier copy.

tt2

I went back to an earlier copy and still nothing appears. 

I was about to give up on this when I remembered that the last iTunes upgrade I did coincided with upgrading my ipad to ios7.  As as happened before when upgrading the ipad, my books were deleted.  Fortunately this time I had backed up the ipad to itunes, so I did a restore from that backup.  Lo and behold, my music library is on the ipad and it must have been put there from that backup, because I didn't have any music on the ipad before.

I've connected the ipad to my computer and opened iTunes.  I don't see a way to copy the music from the ipad to iTunes but there must be a way.  Do you know how to do that?

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

tt2

Thank you for the link.  I did the "transfer purchases" and got most of my music back, though the playlists are gone of course. 

Well, lesson learned once again... don't upgrade ipad or itunes unless absolutely necessary... the risk of losing something is so great.  Too bad about itunes, never had problems with its upgrades before.

Thanks for your help tt2.

You're welcome.

My scripts ImportDevicePlaylists and SyncStats may well let you recover some more useful information from the device.

tt2

I need to correct something in a previous post.  What's on the ipad is all the music but not my playlists.  I guess when I restored from the backup in iTunes, it didn't restore the playlists.  They must be lost forever.