Deleting thousands of duplicates... !!!!

I have just reinstalled Itunes on a new machine & copied my music folder onto the HD. I then added the folder & ITunes helpfully duplicated everything 2, 3 & 4 times? Duh????
The best that Apple helps & even the phone helpdesk could suggest is doing it manually! I have nearly 10,000 duplicates! Get real - who has the time or inclination to sit down & delete them by hand.
I could buy some software but resent having to pay to fix a problem caused by ITunes...! I don't use ITunes by choice, only because they lock you in when you buy an IPod... isn't that what they complained Microsoft did with IE & insisted they were prosecuted for it?
So, is there a reasonable way to delete large numbers of duplicates or is the only way to buy software to solve a problem caused by ITunes? Any recommendations as to s/w?

I wrote a program that I think might delete the duplicates. Whether it works depends on whether those files are identical or not. If the files are in different folders, it won't work.
Go here:
http://www.pobox.com/~teridon/itunesscripts/index.html
and click the download button. Extract the ZIP (teridonsitunesscripts.zip) somewhere, and run "teridonsitunesscripts.exe".
In the window that appears, select "itunesremoveduplicates" and click "Run Selected Script".
A new cmd prompt window will appear, listing all your playlists. Select the Library playlist by typing "1" and hit enter. The program will automatically remove the duplicate entries.
The forum TOS requires me to say: "I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link" because I have a paypal donation link on my webpage, but the program is free (donation totally optional).
HTH,
Rob

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Is there one simple button or option called "delete or remove duplicates" ??

is there one simple button or option called "delete or remove duplicates" ??

to clarify..in winamp you simply click remove duplicates and all duplicate songs are removed. In Itunes it appears you have to click on each individuale song. (yes you can hold the control key and hit delete one time , but when yo uhave hundreds or thousands of songs this is very time consuming
Surely there must be a faster simpler way??????
Message was edited by: IanLeg
NO THIS DIDS NOT SOLVE ANYTHING i'M ADDING TO MY ORIGINAL QUESTION. I DID NOT SAY IT SOLVED IT
THE ITUNES APPLE CRAP IS REDICULOUS

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I recently consolidated a couple incomplete backups into a brand new iTunes library on my Macbook Air.
Despite needing to load both collections to cover all my music, there are thousands of duplicate song files in iTunes.
I can use "Show Duplicates" to show all of them in one screen. But Apple's advice was to simply "select the duplicates I want to delete."
Now, I suppose I can take an extra day off work, Press Command and start to click on every other file listed for several hours and hope I don't mess up at any point and have to start over.
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(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed)
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Deleting thousands of duplicates... !!!!

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