I need to recover iTunes info from old HDD... not just music

You've installed iTunes already you say?

Option 1: Rename the existing iTunes folder inside <User's Music> as iTunes Empty or just throw it away if you haven't imported anything into it. Copy the entire iTunes folder from your old profile on the rescued drive into <User's Music>. Start iTunes. Assuming a standard iTunes layout you're all good. (If however your old library was scattered around different folders I should have tips or tools for repairing it.) If you had imported any content into the initial library move iTunes Empty\iTunes Media into iTunes\Automatically Add to iTunes.

Option 2: Press and hold down shift as you start iTunes. Keep holding until asked to choose a library. Click choose and browse to the <Old Drive>\<Old Profile>\<User's Music>\iTunes folder and open iTunes Library.itl inside it.

Option 1 scores as there are now two copies of the library one of which can serve as a backup for the other.

In each case you will lose access to the old device backups, but provided your devices are working now you can back them up and sync them because you are still using the same libray as before.

In practice it may make more sense to complete a clean install of Windows 7 before recovering your data to the computer rather than upgrading from XP to 7 and hoping the data stays intact. Some applications would need to be reinstalled after an upgrade. You've already lost one authorization when the old computer died. Deauthorize before upgrading.

tt2

So you're saying that on the old machine iTunes was connected to media stored outside of the iTunes Media folder? If so you need to try to restore everything back to the exact same path that it had previously. So if stuff is currently at X:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music then you need to copy it to C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\My Music. In both cases <User> is the old username, even if you have a different one for the new computer. If you have a different user name you can use the shift-start-iTunes method to connect to the library. If you have the same user name you will need to consider what should move out of the way before copying the old data across so nothing is lost or overwitten unexpectedly, though if you have just set up the machine then there is probably not much to worry about. If there was media stored outside <User's Music> that too need to be restored to the exact same path it previously occupied.

The process will bring in the entire libray, purchases and ripped media alike. It does not however bring over the device backups. They are stored in another area of the user profile. It isn't straightforward, but it may be possible to hook up this new install of iTunes to the old device backups. Get the library working first and then we can look into it further. There is also a risk that this missing video file won't have been saved to the backup. 😐

tt2

Hi. As long as the library is transferred properly you should be able to connect your devices and back them up as if nothing had changed. As a rule iTunes only maintains one rolling backup of each device so there is usually no need to migrate the backups too. If you want you can copy C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup from your old profile folder into your new one and iTunes should make sense of it.

tt2

You browse to Z:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync, select the folder Backup, press CTRL+C to copy, then browse to C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync and press CTRL+V to paste.

tt2

As as I am aware there are no absolute references stored within the files inside the MobileSync\Backup folder. iTunes will look for the backup folder within the path pointed to be the %appdata% envionment variable for the active user. I don't know the details, but that folder and the files within it should act as its own catalogue so that a clean install of iTunes on a clean system should discover any device backups that are restored into that folder. Even if there were such absolute references they would be to paths on the C: drive since that is the letter the drive had when it was being actively used for device backups.

With regard to the main library this is stored using absolute references, but there is also a mechanism that lets iTunes adjust when the library is consolidated (all media is inside the iTunes Media folder) and the media folder is a direct subfolder of the iTunes library folder.

tt2