screeminjesus

Q: For the sake of my sanity please help

Hi all, I desperately need your help, iTunes just keeps pushing me closer and closer to the edge!!

I store all my music on an external drive due to space restrictions on my C drive. I also had iTunes on my external drive and everything worked well.

For some reason the latest update installed itself on my C drive with a subsequent loss of most of my music (10k tracks) other than downloads.

When I try to play a track I get the usual message telling me that the file cannot be found and do I want to locate it. I click "locate" and go to my external drive, open my music folder, open the album and click on the track. I then get the usual message asking me if I want it to locate the rest of the music missing from my library.

After clicking "find files" there is a five second delay and it tells me it cannot locate any of the missing 9,960 other files. At which point I'm torn between crying or doing something violent to my pc.

I'm sure the solution is probably quite simple but I'm afraid I'm running out of ideas.

If you can give me any help I would be most, most grateful. Thanks xxx

iPhone 4S, Windows 8, Uploaded windows 8.1

Posted on Jun 11, 2016 4:27 AM

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Q: For the sake of my sanity please help

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  • by turingtest2,Solvedanswer

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Jun 17, 2016 3:44 AM in response to screeminjesus
    Level 10 (85,368 points)
    iPod
    Jun 17, 2016 3:44 AM in response to screeminjesus

    The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.

     

    Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.

     

    In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.

     

    If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.

     

    If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

    1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
    2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
    3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2

     

     

    tt2

  • by screeminjesus,

    screeminjesus screeminjesus Jun 17, 2016 3:45 AM in response to turingtest2
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iTunes
    Jun 17, 2016 3:45 AM in response to turingtest2

    Brilliant, thanks so much.

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Jun 17, 2016 3:48 AM in response to screeminjesus
    Level 10 (85,368 points)
    iPod
    Jun 17, 2016 3:48 AM in response to screeminjesus

    You're welcome.

     

    tt2