Apple Software Update For iTunes Update

IE, the world's favourite browser for installing a better browser. Personally I use Chrome.

Try this new link to Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device. If you can access the old drive in an external drive bay you might be able to copy out the library from X:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes. The tool I recommend in Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy is also useful for extracting data from dying but not yet quite dead drives. If you use Windows Explorer to copy and paste it will simply fall over on the first file that cannot be read. SyncToy will will quietly give up on that file and move on to the next. At the end you'll get a report listing all the failures. You can then run SyncToy again, it will only try to copy what hasn't already been copied, and may be successful on subsequent occasions. Several passes, letting the drive rest between, or maybe even cooling it down, may get you all of the data.

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If you are able to explore the old hard drive on the new computer then you can try to recover the library from it first before installing iTunes, and that is probably best since you won't have to contend with overwriting an empty library. Otherwise if you need to recover media from an Apple device, or from your iTunes purchase history you will need to install iTunes before you can take those steps.

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See Download your past purchases - Apple Support. You will need to install iTunes.

I have had encounters with hard drives that would not boot, but would mount so that data could be read from them. Sometimes a drive that seemingly would not mount, would on the tenth or twentieth attempt. The suggestion is there if you, or anybody else that runs into this thread, wants to make use of it.

I don't believe you had made it clear heretofore that you have no Apple devices from which it might have been possible to recover your media. Had you done so I could have skipped the unnecessary advice.

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I would generally recommend leaving .dll files alone unless you know what is using them and why. I've had a quick look on my machine here and found two copies, both in third party software that interacts with iTunes.

When you want to remove iTunes see Remove and reinstall iTunes and related software components for Windows 7 and later - Apple Support and make sure you uninstall the various components in the correct order. Your media and library will be unaffected by removing iTunes, though the library itself is obviously of no use without it.

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The standard path for the iTunes library is <User's Music>i\iTunes which will normally equate to C:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes. The media folder is created inside the iTunes folder as iTunes Media, and Music gets another subfolder inside this. A typical track path is thus: C:\Users\<User>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext>. You can right-click on a track in you library and use Show in Windows Explorer from the context menu to show where the track is stored.

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You can press the pause button of two vertical bars near the top left of the iTunes window. I suspect you've told iTunes to download all of your purchases. They cannot all download at once so any not actively downloading show as waiting. iTunes can download several items simultaneously but I prefer to disable that option (at the bottom of the download list) and force it to download one item at a time.

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You're welcome. 🙂

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