ORIGINAL FILE CANNOT BE FOUND

Yes, I've been having that kind of problem too. Are all of your music files are on your computer or are they on a separate hard drive? All of my files are on a separate hard drive, and iTunes doesn't detect them on there, even when I've designated the drive as the "Music Folder Location." Every time I plug my hard drive in to listen to some music, iTunes won't detect the file and it tells me that I have to import them all over again. It takes me 10 minutes to import them all, then delete the files that it told me it couldn't find.

If anyone has any help to offer, it would be greatly appreciated. I just want iTunes to detect my music when I plug in my external drive.

Thanks.

Right-click on the file in the iTunes library window and select Get Info. The summary tab will show you where iTunes is looking for the file. Check to make sure the file with that exact name is in that location. If not you can find it and move it or I believe iTunes gives you the option to browse to the file location.

I'm having the same problem. I've never unplugged my external drive but still iTunes can't find any songs until I go in and manually find it myself. I have about 19,000 songs to go...bummer, right?...and I'd really like to know the answers to the following questions.

1. Is there a faster way?
2. Is this going to happen again?

Thanks!

Close iTunes. Go into your iTunes music folder and find a file called "iTunes.itl". Rename that file to something like iTunes2.itl. Close folder. Open iTunes. iTunes should be completely empty of all music files. Close iTunes. Open iTunes music folder. You will see a new file called iTunes.itl. Delete that file. Rename the iTunes2.itl file to iTunes.itl. Close iTunes folder. Open iTunes. Your music files will have returned. This will probably restore your connections to the files.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply, Totem. While I cannot find an ".itl" file, there is a file named iTunes Library. Is that the file I need to rename? Also, I am on a Toshiba pc laptop running XP as well.

Thanks again for your input!

Yes. That's the file. Mine has a musical note, and the word "Data" written on it. There is another iTunes Library file, but that is the .XML file and has a blank icon.

I hope you get it running again.

Open iTunes music folder. You will see a new file called iTunes.itl

No you won't.

What appears to be the Right Way to recover from this: copy the 'iTunes 7 Music Library.xml' file out of Music/iTunes to somewhere safe; move or delete the 'iTunes 7 Music Library file'; start iTunes; import from the copied xml file.

Do not import from the xml file in place. If something goes even a little bit wrong (say, the fileserver where most of the files are currently isn't attached, leading it to think those files don't exist), it will still happily import the rest and create a new library file -- and a new xml file, erasing your old one.

If you find yourself in this situation, copying back the original library file, which used to be locked, may find happiness for you -- it did for me. Which seems to indicate the lockedness is an attribute of the file itself, not of any contents of the file. What kinds of file-system-level file locks survive reboots, though?

I had that problem too. To resolve it I selected Menu - select all and then right clicked and selected delete. A dialogue box appears and I selected "Keep files". It's a bit scary because your entire iTunes library disappears. But don't panic.
Now open My Music and drag iTunes Music folder into the empty white space of your iTunes library. It takes a while for the library to rebuild but when it does the songs will play again.

I had this problem as well; lost 600 of my 841 songs in my library. Almost 500 of them had been purchased through Itunes. After about 4 hours on the phone with technical support, and then customer relations, and being unable to retrieve them from anywhere on my computer, Apple sent new downloads for the majority of my purchases. However, they claimed that nearly 100 of them were not available because the "version" of the song that I had purchased was no longer available. So, I am basically out $100.00. Has this happened to anyone else?

This was the only thing that worked for me.

yes, you will. I tried it and it worked perfectly.

Are these instruction assuming that only iTunes can define where the .itl and .xml files reside? What if I don't want to these information files on my internal drive, but on an external drive? Or does iTunes require Windows users to keep All Things iTunes buried inside the "My" family of folders?

Thanks for any insights.