Bug Report - Some items in your iTunes Library ... because the file could not be found.

10.6 and this is still this is a problem?!?!?!?!
Not like this is an obscure issue only affecting a few noobs. Google returns 11,200 results on this issue!t'
Can we PLEASE at least allow the list of broken files to be dumped as a text file so I can find them manually! guess not,
I'll just have to get out a pencil and write down 100 songs to spend my saturday looking up and fixing. Or I could let my wife purchase 100 songs she already has whenever this comes up...
What's really infurating is that non-technical wife thinks this means she must go to the iTunes store and buy them again.  Is it just coincidence that this only happens to songs that we ripped from the CD with iTunes? Hmmmm?....
what follows is for the programmers, please make sure this get's to the development group.
iTunes is the only music library manager, Media player was not even activated.
iTunes is configured to "Keep folder organized", "Copy files to folder when adding"
this has been a recurring issue since iTunes 9.x for us
The issue is persisted accross system and library rebuilds.
some of the same songs recurr but most of the time the list differs.
Library survived transfer to new computer and back for a system rebuild (new hdd) w/o this issue.
I'm guessing 100 songs is an arbitrary limit for error reporting.
Songs seem to get lost for the following reasons.
Track number added to filename
Spelling of some tags like Album, Artist, Title differ in iTunes library and the file path !!!!
Only seems to happen to mp3 files.
My suspicion is that iTunes is downloading meta data from the store and updating the mp3 tags and iTunes Music Library.xml then predicting the new file location without actually moving the file to that new location. I've enabled insert/update auditing on the NTFS folder to see if that provided any new info.  I'm also capturing iTunes Music Library.xml so I can compare it to the new one WHEN this happens again and see if there is a pattern there.
Would love a bug number and feedback chanel on this.

The missing file thing happens when files are no longer where iTunes expects to find them. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the files, or that the drive they live 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.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files in a relatively sensible structure, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
Although you say you haven't used Media Player it can be raised as a background process by visiting enabled web sites. Possibly worth you reviewing this post: Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely
jerunamuck wrote:
...My suspicion is that iTunes is downloading meta data from the store and updating the mp3 tags and iTunes Music Library.xml then predicting the new file location without actually moving the file to that new location. I've enabled insert/update auditing on the NTFS folder to see if that provided any new info.  I'm also capturing iTunes Music Library.xml so I can compare it to the new one WHEN this happens again and see if there is a pattern there.
Unlike Windows Media player iTunes doesn't have a feature to automatically update tag data, although it will sometimes spot when a 3rd party program has (say during playback) and then update its own copy of the data. The iTunes (Music) Library xml file is provided for querying by third party software and is rewritten every time there is a change to the library, but is otherwise of no relevance to iTunes. The library is maintained in the iTunes Library.itl file. I suppose what could be happening is that iTunes issues a command to the file system to move a file based upon its tag, updates its knowledge of where the file is supposed to be, but the OS fails to move the file for some reason. Alternatively everything could go as planned, but iTunes could fail to get the updated copy of the library written out to disk so next time you start you get the previously stored locations.
I have ideas of my own about the best way to organise my media, but I'm quite familiar with the way iTunes does it. It might be interesting to see the details of one of the broken tracks, the path iTunes thinks it is at, and the actual path, in case there is anything that can be deduced.
Apple don't run an open bug tracking system so you won't be able to follow reports/progress based on a bug number. You can drop a line to iTunes Feedback or get a free Apple Developer account and submit a bug report report there.
tt2

Similar Messages

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    Or...
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    Right-click on your main iTunes folder and click Properties, then go to the Security tab and click Advanced. If necessary grant your account and SYSTEM full control of this folder, subfolders and files, then tick the option to replace permissions on child objects which will repair permissions throughout the library. This is the XP dialog but Windows 7 shouldn't be too different.
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