i copied itunes from one computer to another and the new computer lists all my music but won't play most of the songs that came from physical cds because it cannot locate the files. what can i do?
iPod classic 160GB (Late 2009)
You need to rebuild the library file. See this user supplied tip that contains information on how to deal with this. Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device
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.
tt2
Although both ChrisJ4203's and tt2's responses are correct, if possible you should attempt to re-copy your library from your old PC to the new one. See How to move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Support. The key points are that you may need to consolidate your library on the old machine first so that all your media is contained in the iTunes Media folders, ideally within this structure:
Secondly, you need to replicate the complete iTunes folder and all its contents (typically C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes) from the old computer to the new one. The symptoms you describe suggest either that:
As long as you still have access to the old PC it may be simpler to repeat the transfer process, following the recommended steps to make sure that this is complete and correct, rather than trying to fix issues resulting from an incomplete or invalid transfer.
I copied itunes from one computer to another and now itunes on the new computer lists all my music but won't play most of the music that came from physical cds because it cannot locate the file.
