Hi all,
I'm hoping someone can help me out with this one. Got a new PC, and I'm having some trouble with iTunes finding my music library. Both machines were/are running Windows XP (well, the old machine was running home edition, new one is running Pro, not that it probably matters), and the latest version of iTunes. I followed the steps on the Apple website for transferring the music and library (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1329?viewlocale=en_US), the only difference being I used a portable HDD rather than my iPod. I've gone through this process before a couple of times when I've had to format my hard drive for whatever reason, and I've never had an issue until now. I copied the iTunes folder over the the My Music folder like normal, so the library files should all be correct. Install iTunes, and sure enough, my library shows up just like normal. Only problem is iTunes can't seem to locate the mp3 files themselves properly anymore. Here's what I think is happening: On my old PC, the iTunes library files were stored in My Documents\My Music like normal, however due to lack of hard drive space, I stored the actual mp3 files on a different hard drive in the machine (in this case, d:\mp3). This worked fine when I formatted that machine because iTunes was still pointed to the same hard drive for the music files, as nothing changed on that hard drive when I formatted the primary drive with Windows on it. In this case, I've moved all the mp3s to the default iTunes directory (\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music) since I don't have the hard drive space restraints I was dealing with before. I confirmed that iTunes is pointing to the proper directory under Edit\Preferences\Advanced settings, however every time I click on a song it's telling me it can't find the mp3 file and is asking me to locate it manually. As far as I can see, there's no way to do this easily without selecting one song at a time and locating the file for it. I don't have the time or patience to go through my entire library and manually find all the files, so is there an easier way to do this? I was thinking if I delete my old library, it may even be easier to re-add all the songs to a new one, because at least that way I could select entire folders rather than one song at a time.
Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I'm hoping someone can help me out with this one. Got a new PC, and I'm having some trouble with iTunes finding my music library. Both machines were/are running Windows XP (well, the old machine was running home edition, new one is running Pro, not that it probably matters), and the latest version of iTunes. I followed the steps on the Apple website for transferring the music and library (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1329?viewlocale=en_US), the only difference being I used a portable HDD rather than my iPod. I've gone through this process before a couple of times when I've had to format my hard drive for whatever reason, and I've never had an issue until now. I copied the iTunes folder over the the My Music folder like normal, so the library files should all be correct. Install iTunes, and sure enough, my library shows up just like normal. Only problem is iTunes can't seem to locate the mp3 files themselves properly anymore. Here's what I think is happening: On my old PC, the iTunes library files were stored in My Documents\My Music like normal, however due to lack of hard drive space, I stored the actual mp3 files on a different hard drive in the machine (in this case, d:\mp3). This worked fine when I formatted that machine because iTunes was still pointed to the same hard drive for the music files, as nothing changed on that hard drive when I formatted the primary drive with Windows on it. In this case, I've moved all the mp3s to the default iTunes directory (\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music) since I don't have the hard drive space restraints I was dealing with before. I confirmed that iTunes is pointing to the proper directory under Edit\Preferences\Advanced settings, however every time I click on a song it's telling me it can't find the mp3 file and is asking me to locate it manually. As far as I can see, there's no way to do this easily without selecting one song at a time and locating the file for it. I don't have the time or patience to go through my entire library and manually find all the files, so is there an easier way to do this? I was thinking if I delete my old library, it may even be easier to re-add all the songs to a new one, because at least that way I could select entire folders rather than one song at a time.
Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated! Thanks!