I moved itunes to a new computer. had music but no playlists,

Sounds like you only moved the iTunes music/media folder. Playlists are contained in the iTunesLibrary.itl file.

Move the ENTIRE iTunes folder and all your playlists, playcounts and other iTunes related data will get transferred.

Eching the comment above I suspect you only copied the media folder, instead of copying the main iTunes folder. Playlists, ratings, play counts etc. are all stored in the iTunes Library.itl file that is the core of your library. Migrate the whole library properly and everything ends up on the new system. This is my suggested process.

1. Backup the library with this User Tip.
2. Restore the backup to your new computer using the same tool used to back it up.
3. Deauthorize the old computer if you no longer want to access protected content on it.
4. Keep your backup up-to-date in future.

tt2

turingtest2, you seem to be posting that suggestion in every post I've found about this issue, but the User Tip page where you posted the suggestion itself (telling how to use SyncToy 2.1) doesn't have an option for people to post replies, so I'm gonna reply right in here & ask you a question.

Will that program, SyncToy, work for someone to backup their entire music library in case where they only have one hard drive? Or does it explicitly require there to be a 2nd hard drive in the computer, 2nd computer hooked up by network, or external hard drive present? Because I have none of those things.

With regard to backup, hard drives can and do fail, often without any warning. If you wish to make sure that you don't lose data that matters to you should a drive fail then you need to spread the risk by copying the same data to another drive. If you don't have one already then now is the time to make a small investment. Small USB powered portable external drives are quite affordable.

However the original topic of this thread is about moving a library from one computer to another. This can be done without the aid of an additional drive, simply by sharing the media folder on either the source or target machine and copying over the library, either with SyncToy or Windows Explorer. However I still recommend the use of an external drive as it then establishes a backup for the library that can be kept up to date.

tt2

My old laptop died and somebody at the computer store retrieved my documents and put onto a hard drive. How do I find the itunes library.itl?

Connect the hard drive. Search for the iTunes folder that contains your media, normally X:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes or X:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music\iTunes depending on which version of Windows you were using.

Copy the entire iTunes folder into your music folder on the new machine. Install iTunes.

tt2