Windows iTunes Airplay icon disappeared, how to fix or reinstall?
Windows 10, iTunes 12.9.1.4, 2 Apple TVs and a Philips Airplay speaker
Today my Airplay icon stopped appearing on iTunes. At first, it appeared but would not connect to the Airplay devices (a problem I posted about recently here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8606784, and which I haven’t yet been able to solve as suggested). I rebooted the computer, attempted to repair iTunes, rebooted the whole network, rebooted and checked for updated software on all the Airplay devices, turned off/on Home Sharing, logged out/in my Apple account, and still the problem persists. Occasionally after a reboot, the Airplay icon will be visible for a brief second, but will disappear again.
What now? I assume I should reinstall iTunes--unless someone has a better solution, which I would love to hear!!
I want to be able to restore my playlists, play counts, etc once I reinstall iTunes.
Everything I see online talks about having backing up and having iTunes organize and consolidate files. I don’t fully understand what this does, but I don’t think I want it:
I have spent countless hours organizing my files exactly how I want them. I just want to be able to preserve the plays and playlists and see all my music in iTunes after reinstalling. Is this possible? If so, how do I do it?
My music collection is about a terabyte, all on one hard drive and I don’t see a need to use Consolidate, which sounds like it will make a second copy of every file. That seems unnecessary. Right?
So in short: anyone have a solution for the disappearing Airplay icon, or who can explain to me how to preserve play counts and playlists without modifying or making a copy of my entire music collection?
Thanks in advance!!