iTunes issues

[lawman]

First of all I am not the most tech saavy guy so bear with me on my issue. Yesterday I was prompted to downlown the latest update for iTunes. Have done this dozens of times. After it was done loading I find that only 10% of my music is there. When I select songs the screen say they cant find the song. I have most of my music saved on an external hard drive (always knew this could happen) but I have not idea how to put this music back on my itunes acct. Also....what about the music I have purchased from itunes in the last couple years that is not backed up? Thanks for any tips.

[straydog]

I cant help you but I had the same thing happen a few years ago, I don't let it update anymore.

[CJH]

It isn't finding the songs on the Hard drive. Try and associate the songs with where you are storing them. I am assuming the songs are still listed in your library. If not, you may have to re-import them.

[jwhjr]

Do you have any other external devices plugged in (i.e. flash drive or iphone)? Maybe iTunes is looking for the music on drive "F", but because of whatever else is plugged in "F" is now something else? Just a thought as I run into this occasionally when I am backing up to my external HD.

[upnorth]

Try me.

I am not fond of proprietary software. But try the link above, it may help. Sounds to me it just doesn't know where to look for them. I assume that your settings got overwritten during the upgrade. Do you have the ability to roll back the upgrade? Not sure what OS you have but most have the ability to remove an app or upgrade.

Also, never used iTunes, but I would think there is an import feature and you could possibly pull your files back in to the app.

[delcecchi]

You can use the backups itunes creates to restore library. Happened to me due to an AVG issue. Look for instructions to restore library.

[SkunkedAgain]

My iphone updated a month ago, but the update failed and I lost everything. iTunes did an automatic backup but sometime long ago I had clicked "encrypt iPhone backup" which apparently meant that I set a password. Nothing worked and I lost all of my files.

Make sure that you do not check the "encrypt iPhone backup" option as I've heard about other problems with that feature.

I no longer do updates until they've worked out all of the bugs

[upnorth]

Been working in IT in one capacity or another since 97. We have always waited for a period of time after a patch came out unless it was a critical patch to correct a known issue.

So the thought of waiting for while to let some of the patches age a bit is a good plan. Not all patches are thoroughly tested before they are pushed out. More than once we had either a broken server or large amount of broken PCs that happened because of a bad patch.

[CJH]

Hate to say it, but I ran our iTunes (Windows 7) update about a week ago and everything seems to be working fine. In fact, I had been working on re-associating the file paths with a bunch of our songs after a hard drive crash/re-install, and the update fixed/found most of them.

Sorry for your trouble!!

[bobbymalone]

Ummm, coming in a bit late here.... but doesn't iTunes look for your music in the default "Music" folder in Windows and it creates an iTunes library there....?

Sounds like all you need to do is click on File >> Add Folder >> navigate to the folder containing music on your ext HD >> Click >> Boom - Music added.

[SkunkedAgain]

True, but if you ever move the files (or they get moved) or iTunes looses track of where they are, then you get a bunch of songs that can no longer be found. Not everybody keeps all of their music in one folder.

[bobbymalone]

exactly, which is why you can add folders that aren't in the default location

[CJH]

Ummm, coming in a bit late here.... but doesn't iTunes look for your music in the default "Music" folder in Windows and it creates an iTunes library there....?

I believe it creates its own library, On my old hard drive they were separate.

[SkunkedAgain]

exactly, which is why you can add folders that aren't in the default location

I think that problem comes when you move files in between them.

Example: I have my music in multiple folders for Blues, Classic Rock, Jazz, Soul, etc... If I by chance move an mp3 from one file to the other, iTunes loses it. You can tell iTunes to add that folder to the library again but it usually adds a second listing of the same mp3.

Example2: If I download a song off of Amazon, it goes into a default folder and gets immediately added to iTunes - which I hate. When I move the file to its final spot (such as moving Tampa Red to "Blues"), I need to add the Blues folder to iTunes again but will now have two listings for Tampa Red, one correctly in the Blues folder and the other can't be found because it's still looking for it in the default Amazon download folder.