itunes cannot locate music in my library

I recently loaded itunes onto a new computer that has Windows 8. I copied my entire itunes folder over from my old computer. When I open itunes I can see all my music but when I click on a track I get a message "Song couldnot be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?". When I say yes to this question the search goes to the correct folder but when I click on library it doesn't do anything. The only music I can play is music I purchased through itunes which is on "The Cloud".

Also when I connect my ipod it doesn't sync up, it just charges the battery.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

iPod classic, Windows 8

Posted on Nov 3, 2013 8:53 AM

Jul 19, 2015 10:20 AM in response to JLPPMtl

If you've moved an NTFS drive from one system to another you may possibly have a permissions problem. See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.

Here is my updated boilerplate on the problem.

The "missing file" error 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, one of its parent folders, or 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 click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.

In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout that it generates, not all in one big folder.

If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.

If you can tell me the path to a lost track, the value shown in get info > location for the same item, and the media folder as shown in iTunes preferences I should be able to make suggestions.

tt2