How do I stop Itunes from changing my library location

Is there just no answer to what should be a simple setting change?? No matter what I do, Itunes insists on changing my library location the instant there's any problem talking to my network share where all of my music is. This is absolutely ridiculous because this is on a laptop and there are times when the network connection is just not up yet, or whatever. Then it takes 10 minutes for me to change it back and let it figure everything out again. Has anyone ever been able to resolve this? I'd rather Itunes just return an error that tells me it can't read my library than to change it on me....

Have struggled with this issue in the past. In my experience, there is no simple, painless solution. I attempted to transfer my entire internal drive to my new external where there were copies of all the songs in place. Check to see how your library is organized on your network drive. Is it by media content (e.g. separate folders within /users/music/itunes/ folder such as Music, TV Shows, Movies, etc.)? Or are the various media types all lumped within a single iTunes Music Folder? If there is a discrepancy between your internal and external Library configurations iTunes struggles to cope. Can't say why this is  the case, but I found that the only solution was to throoughly uninstall itunes via terminal (or using an app such as 'Amnesia'), reinstalling iTunes, and creating the library from scratch using files that are located on the external/network drive. I'm a moderately savvy programmer and I couldn't for the life of me get iTunes to build my library from an XML playlist that I modified to reflect the changed directory location of the new library on  my external, but if you are more competent and patient than I am I'm convinced that the proper alteration of the Master library build would result in a seamless relocating of you media library as far as itunes is concerned. One last thing, make sure you click the 'I'll Add files myself later' option if you do choose to reinstall itunes just to cover your bases. sorry i can't give you a more helpful response--iTunes is a cruel mistress sometimes.
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