itunes cannot locate music in my library

If you've copied the paths correctly then there are some unexpected underscores in the path that iTunes "thinks" it should be looking in. The good news is that, otherwise the files look to be in a standard layout so my FindTracks script should be able to reconnect them to iTunes. FindTracks uses some fuzzy matching routines and searches for multiple potential locations. For more details see thisthread. Start by selecting the tracks of a single album and then run the script. Your media folder should be detected as C:\Users\Rachel Milne\iTunes\iTunes Music but you can edit the path if it is wrong. If it works as expected you can then move on to fixing the rest of the library in bigger batches.

tt2

Turingtest2, Thank you for the response. This issue first started when I got a new computer and we tried to install iTunes on a windows8 system. Then I found when I went back to the older computer the files were missing or moved. We found everything, but now I have about 3,000 duplicates on the old computer. Is there a fast way to delete them. I am also going to have to rebuild all my playlists, because most of those songs point to the incorrect fil, but I can deal with that. When I have this all cleaned up on the old computer, how do I get every song in the same file so I can try again to move this to my new computer?

Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.

Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.

Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.

(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed)

See also this migrate iTunes library post.

tt2

hi turingtest2

thanks for the tip... BUT I am being really novicey and thick here, how on earth do I run this script, it looks all goggbledee gook to me? What do I do with, how do I install or run it - are there instructions somewhere because I can;t see anything? So sorry!

There is some guidance on using my scripts at the top of the scripts page, but here is a more detailed description.

A step-by-step guide to using the DeDuper script

1. Start by downloading the script if you haven't done so already. This is a direct download link to DeDuper that you can right-click on for download options: Save to your downloads folder, desktop or somewhere else you can find it easily when you want to use it.
   
2. If it isn't already shown press CTRL+B to enable the menu bar.
3. From the Songs view hold down the SHIFT key and then from the menu bar select View > Show Exact Duplicate Items
   You should get something like image below, click the image to see it in more detail. Click on the heading of the Album column if needed to change the sort order and use CTRL+J to enable artwork if desired.
   
   Note there are 4 copies of the first track. In the second album only tracks 1 to 4 are duplicated which is why only those tracks from that album show up in this view.
4. To test how the script works select a sample of tracks rather than everything. In my case I'm going to select the Adele albums only by clicking on the first track, then scrolling to the last one, and shift-clicking that. This highlights all the songs between the two selections. Like this:
   
   
5. Double-click on the script to run it. Because you've downloaded this script from the web you will probably get a warning message asking if you want to open it.
   
   Obviously this is where you need to decide if you trust my advice. If you do click Open. If you want to prevent repeat warnings you can uncheck the box that says "Always ask..."
   
6. Assuming you click Open you should now get a dialog box like this:
   
   Review the text, cancel if the numbers don't agree with your intentions, otherwise click Yes.
   
7. Depending on your settings for User Account Control and Internet Explorer you may get a progress bar displayed as the script evaluates the duplicates, otherwise you will just get the findings:
   
   
8. Click Yes to remove the duplicates. When they have been removed you will get a results screen:
   
   Note that all the duplicates of Adele's tracks have been removed, while the others remain. Clicking the All button at the top of the display would reveal the rest of the songs.
   
9. If you're happy the script does what it is supposed to press CTRL+A to select all the duplicate tracks and run it again.

Note that it is worth testing the script on one or two albums first to get a feel for it and also to determine if you get shown the progress bar. If not you need to be prepared for the script to take time processing the library with no feedback as to how it is getting on, or easy way to interupt the operation. Tips for allowing the progress bar to work are at the bottom of the scripts page. All smart playlists are recalculated with each removed track so run time is probably a power relationship to library size, i.e double the size of the library and the script could take 4 times as long to run.

Once the library has been cleaned of the duplicates check it through before deleting what has been put in the recycle bin.

tt2

I have the same problem, but on a mac. I realize this is the division for iTunes for Windows, but still ...

iTunes can't find a number of my audiobooks. When I look at the get info box for the location iTunes had added:

file://localhost/ before the actual address which otherwise is correct. Not all files have this problem, but a large number do. SHould I rebuild the index or there some other way to tackle this??

Can you double-check that there is no discrepancy between the two paths other than the addition of file://localhost/ at the beginning of it? That addition should indicate that the file isn't at the rest of the path that follows.

You can try using Get Info > Locate to fix one of your broken tracks. With luck iTunes will offer to correct other broken links and as long as everything in is the usual structure it is normally successful.

tt2

Hi turingtest2! Thanks for taking the time to reply. As far as I can tell there is no difference in the the paths for files that iTUnes can locate and ones it thinks are missing, except for the addition of file://localhost infront of the address in the get info-box. When I look in the itunesmusiclibrary.xml, both the addresses for the mising and the located files have the sale flie://localhost at the beginning of their location string, strangely enough.

I have fixed several tracks in iTunes and never get asked about other tracks.

Looking in the community support forum for iTunes mac it seems that this is indeed a bug that can occur and there is not offered solution, except to go through all the files to identify the ones that iTunes can't locate, and then reconnectng them manually. Given that I have over 1000 files, this will take a while.

The xml file always includes the url of the track in file:// form.

A couple of things to try. Close iTunes, delete the hidden file sentinel from inside the iTunes folder and start iTunes. This should make iTunes perform a database integrity check which might help. If not try using iTunes > Preferences > Advanced to select a new media folder, don't consolidate when prompted, then set the media folder back to the original path, again without consolidating.

tt2

My old computer hard drive crashed, but luckily I had Crashplan, and I was able to restore all my PC files on the new computer. When I got to iTunes, I had the exlamation points also, every song, all 12,000 plus of them.

Whenever I had added music on my old computer, I always went to Library, and click Consolidate after adding, as I added music from iTunes, other websites, and Cd's.

I wanted the songs on my new computer, on my larger 2nd Hard Disk (D:) on the new PC.

So I copyied all my iTunes files/folders to a new folder D:\itunes. (this included the library file, artwork etc., everything, plus the iTunes folder that I could see had all the album songs.

When I opened iTunes, I went to preferences, Advanced, and directed iTunes too look at D:\itunes

When I opened iTunes, I still had the exclamation points on every song. I clicked the first song and got the message "could not find original...".

I chose LOCATE, and clicked through to the iTunes folder to that exact song, and clicked OPEN (or OK).

Then iTuens autmatically prompted to locate the other missing files/songs. I clicked YES.

iTunes sort of froze up, but it was doing something; so I just let it run. I had over 12,000 songs, and it took about 20-30 minutes; then a message popped up "iTunes was able to locate all the missing files".

Yea, they all work, all my artwork, and playlists were there.

I closed iTuens, and re-opened, and it did another routine automatically, took a couple minutes; not sure what this did, but did not affect anything. I closed and reopened again, and all is good.

I was really worried as I tried other methods, but this worked great. Glad I had Crashplan to backup all my files.

Of note: I prefer Crashplan as opposed to Carbonite, as Carbonite says "unlimited", but it does limit the individual file size; whereas Crashplan backs up all files you choose, regardless of the file size.I think I will look at the iCloud backup for iTunes, as I have so many songs, I think it would be worth it as a secondary backup.

adimike and cathypence, precicely how did you go about recovering those files so iTunes would play them? I am having the exact same problem, and it seems you were able to sucessfully rectify the issue. I've been at it for a while now and can't quite figure out how to replicate the solution you discovered. The joy of having a new laptop has been replaced with complete frustration over being unable to access my music. Step-by-step instructions would be SO appreciated! Help!

If you copied all the itunes files to your nre PC... browse until you find the actual song files so you know where the are. If you start itunes and see all your you songs, try playing one... Might get explanation points on all songs not purchased from Apple. If you get message with option to locate the song you tried to play, go ahead and click locate. Now find that exact song file in your itunes folder and select it. Once you do that, itunes will ask you if you want itunes to locate all the missing songs/files, click yes. I had 12000 songs, and it took about 20-30 minutes, so just let it run. Afterwards, I got message, itunes was able to locate all the song files. Now all was good again.

PS, before the stuff in my post above, be sure you have gone to itunes preferences, advanced, and chose the file location, so itunes knowers where you copied the files to, just choose the main folder... Example, c:\itunes, or it might be c:\my music\itunes, whatever it is.

The above post is the way it worked for me. I tried a bunch of things, but once I had it find one file, it asked to look for other missing files and found almost everyone of them.

My husband pretty much followed what turnngtest2 said to do and was able to find almost everything. I am not sure why my songs were in so many locations. The hardest ones to find were the ones I had dowloaded from iTunes to my old computer.

After we found most of the music, I had alot of duplicates which I deleted one at a time, because I needed to check each of them. I have duplicate songs titles with different artists and also some duplicates because I have karaoke versions

There were some things we didn't find, so I had my old computer and new computer next to each other and the ones that were missing I added using a USB stick. Very tedious to look at both lists...took me a few days to do this part.

Took me a couple of weeks from start to finish and I still have some playlists to recreate, but am building them a little at a time.

I don't know why this is so hard to change computers, I hope I don't need another computer for a very long time!