iTunes can't locate files except manually

Question

Level 1

0 points

iTunes can't locate files except manually

I'm sure others have had this problem, though I couldn't find it in previous posts (many are very similar). I keep my music files on an external hard drive. In the past, if I forgot to plug in the drive and tried to play a song in iTunes, I'd get a exclamation point by the file. Sometimes it would put an exclamation by all files. Usually, though, I would manually find one file and it would find all the other I had in that folder. I've been doing this for a year, using iTunes frequently with no trouble. Today, non of the songs have exclamation points by them until I click on them so none of them are searched for except manually. Eventually, I had the idea to put all of my songs into a playlist, which made iTunes realize it couldn't find them, so now they all have exclamation points, but locating one file does not point iTunes to the rest. I changed the iTunes media folder location to the external hard drive, though my music is in two folders on this drive. Nonetheless, even within a given folder, iTunes doesn't automatically find all other missing files the way it has in the past. Thanks in advance for your help.

Posted on Oct 9, 2015 10:37 AM

Reply

Answer 1

ianissimo Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 9, 2015 10:44 AM in response to ianissimo

I've been plugging the HD into other USB ports and trying a few other things to try to help iTunes find my files; it has finally again started offering to use the location of one file to find others in the same location, but when I tell it to do so, it still doesn't find any of the other songs in that location. I saw someone else say that iTunes couldn't find files with special characters in them, so it's worth mentioning that nearly all of my actual file names are random four letters assigned by iTunes.

Reply

Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Oct 9, 2015 1:08 PM in response to ianissimo

The random four letter filenames are what iTunes places in hidden folders on an Apple device. It would seem you've rescued the content from a device at some point, but not normalised the files you've recovered into a standard iTunes library, which is probably why you are having trouble now.

What format are the files in? As long as they are not in .wav format you should be able to use MediaMonkey's Auto-Organize tool with the pattern .\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Track#:2> <Title> to put the files in a more typical layout, then use my script FindTracks to repair the broken links in iTunes.

See also Make a split library portable.

tt2

Reply

Answer 3

ianissimo Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 10, 2015 12:14 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for the info! I downloaded the script at the link you shared and followed the instructions on the page, but when I try to run the script, I get an error saying

Can't find script engine "VBScript" for script.

followed by the location of the script. I tried to be proactive and figure it out myself and another site instructed me to run the command prompt and type

regsvr32 jscript.dll

It stated this suceeded. I then typed:

regsvr32 vbscript.dll

which also succeeded. nonetheless, when I opened iTunes and tried to run the script again, I received the same error. Thanks again for your help. Any other suggestions?

Reply

Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Oct 10, 2015 12:32 PM in response to ianissimo

What version of Windows are you running? There might be help here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/949140

tt2

Reply

Answer 5

ianissimo Author

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2015 12:01 PM in response to turingtest2

Well, thank you for your assistance, but I think I'm doomed. The Windows support link you provided offers a "fix it for me" option, which failed. Then there's the "fix it myself" which involves command prompts, which all either said something about the directory not existing or other things to the effect that nothing was doing. I even uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes, which meant updating to a newer, crummier version... I guess I'm going to spend the next few months manually locating all 40,000 files. Any other suggestions? At any rate, thanks again for your help

Reply

Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

272,725 points

Oct 13, 2015 12:14 PM in response to ianissimo

That's why I asked what version of Windows you are running. I might be able to find a more recent version of that support document that applies to your version.

Alternatively it may be possible to move things to where iTunes expects them. If you click Get Info on a track with a broken link, then click cancel when asked to locate it, what value do you see on the file tab? It will begin file://localhost. If you can show me that path, the true path to real file, and also the location of the media folder as given under Edit > Preferences > Advanced I might be able to make some suggestions.

tt2

Reply