HT1351 I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7. I saved my iTunes on external hard drive and reinstalled them. My iTunes no longer recognizes my device - a 5th gen. iPod. I can's synch

Question

I upgraded my Dell computer from Vista to Windows 7.  I saved my iTunes library on an external hard drive.  I somehow managed to erase them from my iPod.  Now my songs won't play on the Dell and my iPod is not "recognized" as a device by my computer.  I have "reset" the iPod by toggling the lock and holding down the menu and center button at once, but still no luck.  How can I get my songs from my Dell back to my iPod?

Answer 1

At a guess you followed the process in HT1364 - iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder which would have moved the media folder to a new path of your choice. This process leaves the library database files back in the original location of <User's Music>\iTunes. Often people assume that all they need is now on the external drive and wipe the internal drive, or discard their old computer, before backing up the all important iTunes folder. If you have a backup of your user's profile folder from before the upgrade the iTunes library folder should be in there somewhere. Restore it to <User's Music> and your original library should pop back into existence. The external drive would need to have the same drive letter that it had previously.
A more effective way to relocate the library is to move the entire iTunes folder to the external drive, then hold down shift when starting iTunes and keep holding until asked to choose or create a library. You would then choose the file iTunes Library.itl in the iTunes folder on the external drive. If this is the way you moved the library before then that is how you should now reconnect to it. Changing the media folder in preferences doesn't change which .itl database file is opened, nor does double-clicking on an .itl file directly.
If you no longer have the original .itl file then you will have to build a new library and import the media to it. If you need to do this I would recommend you create a new library at F:\iTunes, then move your existing media folders inside F:\iTunes\iTunes Media before importing. This will avoid the creation of duplicates and make sure the library is in the correct shape going forwards.
If you have an iPod or iOS device my scripts ImportDevicePlaylists and SyncStats may well let you recover ratings, play counts & playlists from the device.
When you've fixed up your libray you should consider getting a second external drive to backup to.
tt2