I Tunes unable to locate music ?

Question

I have just spent 7 hours updating our i-Tunes account. I successfully deleted the extra copies of tracks,located missing files,updated the library and then backed up the whole of i-Tunes.
I then backed up the whole I-Mac to an external drive and was busy patting myself on the back for an excellent job when I thought I would just check and see everything opened properly after a shut down. I didnt.
When i opened i-Tunes I could see all my albums,all the artwork,all the playlists, all the music files perfectly organised as I had left them.
BUT when I clicked on a tune to listen to it, i-Tunes gave me a mesage saying i-Tunes was unable to locate the music file ? I followed the link path to where the music was stored, user\music\ i-Tunes\ i-Tunes media etc and there was all the music as I had left it ??
When I clicked on any file in i-Tunes it could find it, but when I click on the media folder with the music in it opens i-Tunes up perfectly and plays my tune. I've tried emptying the whole i-Tunes library and then restoring it from i-Tunes folder but I get multiple copies of the allbums, missing artwork, missing files, some albums have one or two tunes missing and some are completely duplicated, e.g. I can see two copies of each track in the album..........I cant believe it ! why is i-Tunes so frustrating ? all I want it to be able to see one copy of each track on each album and keep it that way.
Is it something to do with my library ? is that corrupted ? should I delete the library and create a new one ? how do I do that ? How, (once I've got it back to how I want it) do I save everything and ensure it doesn't go reading something corrupt again. This is a nightmare...HELP

Answer 1

The exclamation mark for missing files is shown 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. Changing the path to the media folder won't fix the links to files you've moved by hand.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then say no when asked 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. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. I would suggest you untick Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Keep iTunes Media folder organized before you start so that things don't have to move around as they are repaired.
tt2