OMG PLease Help, iTunes Library Update

Since you havn't used the program in a year, what happened is over the year you added, Deleted and moved the songs around and iTUnes loosed them when you do this outside of iTunes.

What you need to do is first locate the MP3s if there still on the PC. Look in the "My Music" folder and search the system by going to Start button>Search, check "Music" Leave the seach field blank and see if it finds anything first.

Post back and we will take it from there

OK Just so Im clear on things before we go further, You say the MP3s were deleted when consolidating. Do you mean they was deleted from iTunes and are still on the PC, They were deleted from the PC, or they was deleted from an iPod?

On a PC when you rightclick a song in iTUnes and hit "Clear" it only removes it from the list on the PC. If its a purchased song you get 2 pop ups, one asking if you really want to do this, then another asking if you want it removed to the Recycle bin (Which pretty much deletes it from the PC)

Search your computer for your MP3s... click start go to Search for Files and Folders. Type in *.mp3 and hope that they pop up. If they do, you should also see where they are located to the right. Go to that location and you could probably drag and drop them into your iTunes Library to repopulate it.

This may also create doubles of the songs depending on your iTunes settings.

OK since your library seems to be somewhat of a mess with ! marks and things. I would recommend just deleting it out and having iTunes search and rebuild the lIbrary.

Now doing this WILL NOT delete the songs. Its just a quick and easy way of getting the mess clean up if you have a ton of music listed in it and don't care about keeping playcounts, ratings, and playlist you have created. If you do want to keep your playlistyou can save them as a text file so when the library is rebuilt you can manualy recreate the playlist you have. This is a regular playlist and not a Smart Playlist (Which I dount you have if you havn't used iTunes in over a year)

If you want to go this route post back and I'll take you step by step. It will be the easyest thing to do, also note if you want to keep playlist or not

Again just to cover basics make sure you have the latest version of iTunes (Version 6.0.4.2) by going to Help>About If you do not just go to the very top of this page and hit the "iPod=iTUnes" tab and download/install it.

Now close iTUnes if its open, goto My Music/iTunes in windows and delete the "iTUnes Music Library.xml" and "iTunes Library itl" file. When you open iTunes back up it will be blank and also it will make the files you just deleted back into the my music/itunes folder.

To get iTunes to auto search and add all the medis files (Music and video files) back to iTUnes, you have to delete a hidden file called "Pref". Close iTUnes and follow the instructions here posted by Scott P http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=607357

After doing this, when you open iTunes you will get a "Setup Wizard" just like it was your first time ever installing iTUnes to the PC. Going thru these steps is where you will hit the option for iTUnes to search the system and add songs. This will be the only time you have this option unless you delete the "Pref" file again.

Almost forgot but after doing this if you use iTunes to rip/import CDs you will want to goto edit>preferences>Advanced Tab>Import Sub tab and pick the format you want be it AAC, MP3 or whatever.

If using another program to rip/import the CDs you can add the files to iTUnes (Long as there UNprotected) by going to file>add file (Or Folder) to Library or simply playing the song in iTUnes

Message was edited by: pac_80

Your welcomed, So did you delete the Pref file and have iTUnes search the system for music and add it to the library?