ITunes Files Lost & Really Cannot Locate, Please Help!

Question

Hi all
I have just downloaded the latest iTunes update and the latest IOS sodtware update 8.1 for my iPhone.
However, I have noticed my iTunes on my laptop has all gone wrong.  The majority of my music has the ' ! ' symbol next to it and the usual 'Cannot Locate File' message.  I have read several forums on here about the dragging of the 'iTunes Library' file to desktop, opening iTunes and then importing a New Playlist but this is only finding the music that I have purchased via the store opposed to the majority of my music that has been installed onto iTunes by copying from CD.
I am at a loss as to where they have gone or where they would have gone.  Can anyone help?
Many thanks

Answer 1

The "missing file" error happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
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