iTunes and new PC quandry - Genius Bar couldn't help, can you?

Question

iTunes and new PC quandry - Genius Bar couldn't help, can you?

Received a new PC with a new job. Loaded iTunes on the new PC, and of course the songs on my iPhone can be loaded into my new iTunes setup. However I also can't manage the music on my iPhone via iTunes because if I click "Manually manage.." it will replace all of the songs on my iPhone with the ones in my empty new iTunes setup.

So, can anyone help me figure out how to get the items from the iTunes library on my previous PC into this new one? Figure if I can do that then I can manually manage and it won't cause any issues.

Lenovo T500, Windows XP Pro

Posted on Dec 18, 2008 2:18 PM

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Answer 1

Zevoneer

Level 9

52,705 points

Dec 18, 2008 2:22 PM in response to dale.leatherwood

If you only want to copy your purchases to the computer that can be done using iTunes, you'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer

For everything else (including purchases) there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod Touch or iPhone. You'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer data (such as playcounts and ratings), movies, videos, photos, podcasts and games as well.

A selection of iPod/iPhone to iTunes utilities:
Senuti Mac Only (iPod Touch & iPhone compatible)
SharePod Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TuneJack Windows Only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)

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Answer 2

Dec 19, 2008 5:42 AM in response to dale.leatherwood

If you have the old iTunes computer, why not just copy the entire library to the new computer? As long as you keep the directory structure the same, it'll work fine.

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Answer 3

Katrina S.

Level 7

24,131 points

Dec 19, 2008 7:14 AM in response to dale.leatherwood

I second SteveFLHTCI's suggestion of copying the entire itunes folder over to the new PC. Not just the itunes Music folder, but the top-level itunes folder.

That should copy of the itunes library database file - the ITL file- and that is waht your iPhone is synced with. If it sees the same ITL file on the new PC, everything should be OK.

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Answer 4

Dec 19, 2008 1:40 PM in response to Katrina S.

Thanks. Not to sound too dumb, but can you tell me exactly which files/folders I should copy over? That sounds like the best solution.

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Answer 5

Katrina S.

Level 7

24,131 points

Dec 20, 2008 2:35 AM in response to dale.leatherwood

On your old XP PC, this is the folder that holds your ITL library file and all the music subfolders.

\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes

If you copy that top-level folder over, than you'll have everything - the ITL file and all the subfolders with artists & the album music files.

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Answer 6

Dec 23, 2008 7:48 AM in response to Katrina S.

Thanks Katrina. Trying it today, will let you know!

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Answer 7

Spedione

Level 1

0 points

Feb 7, 2009 5:25 PM in response to Katrina S.

When you put that iTunes folder on your new computer, make sure you put it in the same place (filepath) that it was on your old computer, otherwise it won't find the songs. It's happened to me before.

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