Walter Raymond
Level 1 (5 points)

Q: restore itunes purchases lost on my PC

Hello

 

I've lost a lot of my iTunes purchases. Not sure how. When I go to my iTunes account "Purchased" section, iTunes thinks the music is on my PC, but it is not. When I click a song it reports that it cannot find it and offers to look for the music. (This, by the way, locks iTunes 12 requiring a Task Manager "end task" and restart of iTunes.)

 

How can I get the iTunes Store to re-check for content on my machine so that I can download lost purchases?

 

Is there a restore routine where iTunes checks and restores missing content files?

 

Many thanks,

 

Walter

PC, Windows 10

Posted on Jan 13, 2016 11:14 PM

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Walter Raymond

Q: restore itunes purchases lost on my PC

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  • Helpful answers

  • by D.Cohen,

    D.Cohen D.Cohen Jan 13, 2016 11:48 PM in response to Walter Raymond
    Level 6 (8,424 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 13, 2016 11:48 PM in response to Walter Raymond

    Try reinstalling iTunes and then redownloading your purchased music.

    Remove and reinstall iTunes and related software components for Windows 7 and later - Apple Support

    Download your past purchases - Apple Support

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Jan 14, 2016 7:15 AM in response to Walter Raymond
    Level 10 (88,264 points)
    Apple TV
    Jan 14, 2016 7:15 AM in response to Walter Raymond

    If iTunes has a broken index entry in the library for one of your past purchases it assumes you have a copy in your library and doesn't offer the track for redownloading. You can delete the existing tracks that have an exclamation mark, without hiding from iTunes in the Cloud, close iTunes, then reopen. You should now find your past purchases available for redownload.

     

     

    If there are many such tracks you might find this method to locate them useful.

     

    Lost & Found playlists

    Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist. They can be deleted with Ctrl+A and then Shift+Delete.

     

    Or use iTunes Folder Watch and enable its option to check for dead tracks on startup.

     

     

    One drawback with the proposed solution is that you will lose ratings, play counts, playlist membership and the original date added information associated with each track that you delete. If you want to avoid that then it would be possible to recover the tracks using a separate library, switch back to your main library, import the media you have downloaded and use a script called DeDuper, to clean up the duplicates and broken entries preserving the metadata and stats.

     

    tt2