Q: After installing the latest itunes update most of my music cannot be located. A box pops up and says the song cannot be found. What can I do?

I would take a look at this article first: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1967

That could be so.  I don't believe individual components like Bonjour are available for download anymore so you can go to itunes.com and try installing it from there.

I'm having the same issue! Every time I update ITunes something happens and messes everything up. I can't even locate music I purchased from the ITunes store. This *****.

The "missing file" thing 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, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. 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 say no when asked to locate the track. Look on the summary 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, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.

In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

 

The "missing file" thing 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, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. 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 say no when asked to locate the track. Look on the summary 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, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.

 

In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes.

 

tt2

Having the same issue.. All of playlists were deleted as well as the majority of my music can't be located. It seems the only music that can be located is the music I have purchased directly through itunes/iphone.

The location where itunes thinks my music file is:

"file://localhost/C:/Users/MY NAME/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/"

The actual location where my music file is:

"C:/Users/MY NAME/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/"

This is weird because I have not moved my music and it was working fine before I upgraded to the new iTunes...

My steps:

1) update itunes to latest version

2) plug in old phone take backup in itunes

3) plug in new phone and restore from that backup

I didn't notice the issue until I looked on my phone and all of music was missing from my phone along with playlists (minus the music I purchased directly from iphone/itunes.

Then I looked in itunes in my music library and saw itunes can't locate my music files.  I also tried replacing the previous itunes library file as noted in the support link above but didn't do anything..

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

iTunes Media is the modern name for the media folder so I'd recommend that you simply rename the folder iTunes Music as iTunes Media assuming you don't already have a folder called iTunes Media, or it contains nothing of significance so you can delete it.

The next issue is whether your media folder is in the "new" or "old" layout. The old layout put tracks at <Media Folder>\<Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext>, the new layout uses <Media Folder>\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext>.

The full paths to a particular missing file and its real location would have included this information. If there is a discrepancy between the real and expected locations it should be possible to tweak a preference file to fix things so that iTunes can see the tracks or, again, you could move them to agree with expectations.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

 

iTunes Media is the modern name for the media folder so I'd recommend that you simply rename the folder iTunes Music as iTunes Media assuming you don't already have a folder called iTunes Media, or it contains nothing of significance so you can delete it.

 

The next issue is whether your media folder is in the "new" or "old" layout. The old layout put tracks at <Media Folder>\<Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext>, the new layout uses <Media Folder>\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext>.

The full paths to a particular missing file and its real location would have included this information. If there is a discrepancy between the real and expected locations it should be possible to tweak a preference file to fix things so that iTunes can see the tracks or, again, you could move them to agree with expectations.

 

tt2

Awesome! Thanks for the help.. I will look as soon as I get home from work.. I think what may have happened was when I took a backup of my old phone... the music I purchased from my phone was added to my library.. Seems itunes could have created the new layout path and placed that music there which would explain why it can only locate that music. I may be able to copy my new music files into the folder where all my other music resides.. then rename that to match the new folder structure and see what happens.. I'll report back.. Thanks again!

Aha, I missed the original mention of the missing playlists. Take a look at Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

tt2

turingtest2 wrote:

 

Aha, I missed the original mention of the missing playlists. Take a look at Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

 

tt2

My issues are now resolved. Thanks again for the help!

I just grabbed everything in the "iTunes Media" folder and put it in the "iTunes Music" folder then renamed to "iTunes Media". That also resolved my playlist issue.

You're welcome.

tt2