Itunes can't find my music folder

I can't install Itunes....it downloads fine from the exe file but when i try to open itunes it gives me the error msg that it can't find My Music folder. I went to the support page and it told me that if i couldn't find My Music folder to create one in My documents and download/install Tweak UI. I did and followed all the steps except when it asks me to click on My computer, then special folder and can't find the My Music folder to move it. I am using Windows XP....Please help. Has anyone ever had this problems?

I finally found a solution here: http://forums.techarena.in/windows-xp-support/983948.htm
it's stupid, you have to hold down the shift key while you open iTunes (don't just hold it while you click, keep holding it until iTunes actually shows the library dialog).

Similar Messages

ITunes can't find My Music folder & won't launch - Vista OS

Hello,
I've been using iTunes successfully for months with Vista, then one day iTunes wouldn't launch. I got the error message "The folder itunes cannot be found or created and is required. The default location for this folder is inside the my music folder."
I've seen a similar post but for Windows XP - referencing a system registry problem.
This doesn't seem relevant because Vista doesn't even have a My Music folder. The folder is named "Music" and is not located in My Documents.
Can anybody help? Thanks!
I upgraded to Windows Vista on my Sony VAIO desktop. There w

Then I already gave you your answer in a previous post.
By the way:
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847
Image of folder structure and explanation of different iTunes versions (turingtest2 post) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/13025536 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/17457605

Itunes can not find My Music folder

I recently had a friend who backed-up my music folder to a external hard drive. After a while it was to complicated to use, so I moved all my music back to my laptop. Now when I start iTunes, it states
"The folder "i Tunes" cannot be found or created, and is required. The default location for this folder is the "My Music" folder
I followed instructions from the Apple website to download Tweak UI, but even that doesn't list "My Music" folder. It list all the others, "My Pictures etc."
When I click on my documents, "My Music" is there with the "Itunes" folder, but I am still unable to get Itunes to work. Please help.
Dell Windows XP Nano

hiya!
in the cases where "My Music" doesn't appear as an option in TweakUI, we've been having some success using the alternate procedure in this Nigel Carpenter post:
Nigel Carpenter: re: Itunes problem
love, b

I can't find my music folder in my ipod. please help

I synced all my folder music to Ipod classic, then I look to my Ipod classic but I can't find my music folder anywhere. Please help...

Try a Restart.
Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red "slide to power off" slider appears, and then slide the slider. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.
Resetting your settings
You can also try resetting all settings. Settings>General>Reset>Reset All Settings. You will have to enter all of your device settings again.... All of the settings in the settings app will have to be re-entered. You won't lose any data, but it takes time to enter all of the settings again.
Resetting your device
Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears. Apple recommends this only if you are unable to restart it.
Or if this doesn't work and nobody else on the blog doesn't have a better idea you can contact Apple.
Here is a link to their contacts with most of the information below.
http://www.apple.com/contact/

Bought new HD and now iTunes can't find my music

I just bought a new FW HD, WD My Passport. I copied all of my music from my old USB 2.0 HD to the new one and now iTunes can't find all the songs. It'll play probably 40 or 50 songs but the rest of them show the "!" next to the song name. Right now the only thing I can do to show iTunes where the songs are without having to rebuild my playlists is to manually point it to each individual song but since but that would mean pointing it to over 14,000 songs......... I DID go in to the preferences and changed the folder location to the new HD and it still won't find the files. But strangely enough, when I have the old HD plugged in, as well as the new one, it'll play everything just fine, checking the preferences shows that iTunes is pointed to the new folder but "Get Info" on individual tracks shows iTunes finding the file in the old HD, unplug old HD and files cannot be found. Why doesn't the **** program look where I want it to and what do I have to do to fix it? I know my description here isn't crystal clear so I'll gladly answer any question to help clear it up a little. ANY help is very much appreciated as I do not want to spend the next 3 weeks teaching iTunes one song at a time. Thank you.
Chris

For moving your iTunes library, I recommend this method...
Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
If you are just testing, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location.
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
Patrick

ITunes can not find my music on external hard drive

Had to redo my hard drive; had all music on external hard drive; copied iTunes folder onto external hard drive. Now that my desktop hard drive is clean, and new iTunes downloaded, it can not find my music on the external drive which I have always used. Is there some setting I am missing, do I have to copy music onto CPU?

Hold the SHIFT key while launching iTunes. You will get the option to navigate to the iTunes folder on your external drive. In the iTunes folder point it to the iTunes Library.itl file.

Itunes can't find my music from old file

Although my music is available on my ipad and phone, Itunes can't find and play my music on my laptop. WTH?

+changed the location of the music folder to E: iTunes Music.+
All this does is make future additions go to that new place.
When you move things around outside of itunes, it loses the path, as you've found.
Can you move everything back and use the Consolidate Library command to move it to the new location?
Here is a good article from iLounge on what you need to understand about the process.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive

HT203288 Itunes can not find my music files. But I can with Windows . Lost over 8 hours trying to fix stupid itunes, Even removed it and reinstalled. Still nothing.

But I can using Windows.
Lost over 8 hours today. Still not working
Even deleted itunes and reinstalled.
My Music files are still there. But itunes can not find them.

Empty library or library full of broken links?
tt2

I've moved my music folder and now iTunes can't "find" my music

I recently moved my iTunes folder of music (46 gigs) from an external drive back to my iMac's internal drive. The music files are all on my iMac now (in the music folder), and I've changed the preferences in order to map iTunes to the new location. But when I attempt to play most of the songs, iTunes will give me a message saying the song could not be found, and I have to manually locate each song in order for iTunes to play it.
There seems to be no commonality to the problem either. For the "compilation" albums, I can kinda understand why I would have to do this. But I'm having to do it for single songs, full and partial albums, and even iTunes-purchased songs.
1) Why is this happening?
2) Is there a way to batch-process this requirement to map ALL the songs for iTunes so I don't have to do it for every other song file in my 46-gig folder?
3) Once I finally do "find" all the files for iTunes, will I face the same problem when I move my music back to another external drive in the future?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

I see. For your future benefit, here is the "canned" response I usually post for people trying to move their library to an external drive...
Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589
If you are just testing to make sure a backup copy works and still want to use the internal location, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location. Otherwise you are all set to use the library from the external location.
Additional info...
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
Cheers,
Patrick

ITunes in Vista RC1 - can't find My Music folder

I installed iTunes 7.0.1 in Vista (64 bit)& launced iTunes. I get an iTunes error message saying "The folder 'iTunes' cannot be found or created, and is required. The default location is inside the 'My Music' folder." I can't even open iTunes to direct it to the location; when you click OK on the box, it closes the error box and iTunes doesn't open.
Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

I had been keeping my library in an external disk drive, that had - until the crash - been my 'G' drive. Post crash it now calls itself the 'K' drive.
your registry will probably still be looking for the My Music folder on your K drive. (the "My Music" folder has special registry properties.)
so let's try shifting the drive letter on that drive back to "K". for instructions on shifting drive letters, see the following document. (although it's about changing the drive letter of an iPod, the same basic principle apply to changing the drive letters of other drives.)
Windows confuses iPod with network drive or hard drive and may keep iPod from mounting or songs may seem to disappear

I cannot start iTunes because the program can't find 'My music' folder

I had a fairly hefty PC crash yesterday, and I cannot now start my iTunes software. The error message is: "The folder 'iTunes' cannot be found or created, and is required. The default location for this folder is inside the 'My Music' folder."
I had been keeping my library in an external disk drive, that had - until the crash - been my 'G' drive. Post crash it now calls itself the 'K' drive.
All I can presume is that the software is pointed towards the old 'G' drive.
My music is still intact, but I just cannot connect to it.
Can anybody help, please?
Many thanks.
iPod 5th Gen 80 gig Windows XP

I had been keeping my library in an external disk drive, that had - until the crash - been my 'G' drive. Post crash it now calls itself the 'K' drive.
your registry will probably still be looking for the My Music folder on your K drive. (the "My Music" folder has special registry properties.)
so let's try shifting the drive letter on that drive back to "K". for instructions on shifting drive letters, see the following document. (although it's about changing the drive letter of an iPod, the same basic principle apply to changing the drive letters of other drives.)
Windows confuses iPod with network drive or hard drive and may keep iPod from mounting or songs may seem to disappear

Changed laptops, now iTunes can't find my music on my file server

Ok, here's what happened when I recently switched laptops
- I use iTunes to point to the music I store on my file server via a network share (WinXP)
- I manually manage my iTunes folders
- I took the \My Documents\My Music\iTunes directory from my old laptop and copied it to the same location to my new laptop
- Installed iTunes 9 on the new laptop
- When iTunes9 loaded on the new laptop ALMOST all music files in my library loaded with an exclamation point indicating that it couldn't locate the file (even though the file locations never changed)
Ok... so here's the problem. I have over 20,000 songs with ratings information and if I just re-add all the files from the network share to the iTunes library again then it looks like I'd lose those ratings.
The only way that I can see to fix things is to individually point iTunes to the network share location of the file for each file... YUCK!
Is there a script or something I can write to tell it to find these files, or at least copy the ID3 tags to the duplicated songs that I re-added from the network share.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Something is different in the paths to the files....hence itunes cannot find them.
Sound like you know about the ITL file, which is why you copied it over.
What you can do is look in its companion XML file to see the paths itunes thinks it should be using.
If your XML is really big, open it using WordPad instead of NotePad. About the 10th line down is the itunes preference setting for the itunes folder:
key>Music Folder</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/</string>
On my system it's K:/iTunes Music
The %20 just indicates a space.
Then each song will have its own path
<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/K:/iTunes%20Music/Cowboy%20Junkies/The%20Trinity%20Session/07%2 0200%20More%20Miles.mp3</string>
Now....can you see ANYTHING funny in one of those song paths?Is there an extra space, a different user name, anything different than what you could browse to in Windows Explorer?

ITunes can't find the music - long post

Here’s the situation; apologies for length, I want to get all the details down.
The music collection:
8Tb (and growing) in lossless format, on an Ethernet network, accessed via the Mac Mini running OS 10.9.2 that’s my entertainment centre. The music is stored on a D-Link server in a RAID 1 setup. I’ve disabled the iTunes import features keep the iTunes media folder organised and copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to library because with a very large library of opera and other classical music with multiple artists, this produces chaos. I’ve tried editing the file info before import, but the organisational results are still awful. I put the music files into folders named by composer, then subfolders for each work named by composer and performer(s), then add them to the library. If I didn’t do this I’d have (and have had), e.g. Turandot sorted by artist into eight separate albums. I’m sure many of you know the problem already, I just want to make sure everything’s clear.
There’s also a separate, lower bit rate, collection for my iPod.
The music library (.itl) files:
There are two, the complete library file for home listening, and the separate library file for iPod music. I’ve tried keeping the library files on my hard drive so they’re included in Time Machine backups; and keeping them on the server with the music collection. The same problem happens whichever way I do this.
I option+click when loading iTunes to select the library file I want to use, to make iTunes point to the correct media file location. I make sure I’m connected to the server before I do this(!)
The problems:
Every time I select a playlist either the playlist doesn’t list any tracks but shows me how many songs there are in the playlist; or iTunes tells me it can’t find the first file in the list - do I want to locate it manually? I do locate it and then I have to tell iTunes to find the other missing files; it finds the files in that playlist but then takes several minutes to tell me that it can’t find all the other ‘missing’ files in that big library. Meanwhile, I’m not able to listen to any music.
It seems to me that iTunes only works properly if the music is actually on the local hard drive but how many of us have that little music? I buy DVDs and rip the music myself, at max bit rate, I don’t buy downloads.
One problem seems to be that the Mac OS doesn’t index external drives automatically, is this true? This morning I’ve forced Spotlight to index the server drives using the terminal mdutil command but it’s made no difference, the problems are still there. What is Spotlight supposed to do? I’ve followed the instructions for using it and researched using it on the Web, but it’s never been able to find files I know are there, yet EasyFind has no trouble locating anything on the local drive, the music server or other external drives. I suspect that there are more fundamental bugs in the OS affecting this, because sometimes I’ve looked at a folder count in the Finder and know that the displayed number of files is wrong, it’s less than the number of files I know are there. Get Info will give me different numbers for the same folder at different times when I haven’t added or deleted any files in it.
I’m looking at Music Collector as a replacement for iTunes, but if iTunes’ problems are based in the OS, there doesn’t seem any point in switching. The price is reasonable, I’m happy to pay for it if it will work properly on the Mac OS. If I’d had to pay for iTunes I’d be getting my money back as it obviously isn’t fit for purpose. I’m in the EU, we have proper consumer protection laws here.
The Mini is 17 months old, still under a 3-year high ed warranty and has just come back from servicing at an Apple retailer, which fixed a software problem that prevented the OS from loading, so it should be problem-free... right?
Do you think reimporting the whole music collection again, using the two iTunes settings I’ve disabled, would make iTunes retain its links? I have the server space. It’s a nightmare scenario, imagine that Turandot again, 55 tracks split into eight albums, by soloists, conductor, and orchestra, and iTunes’ and/or Mac OS search facilities not working properly. How would I find all the tracks and create playlists for everything? There’s a lot of CDs that would give me the same problems. I have a 50-CD set of the Berlin Philharmonic covering 100 years of recordings, trying to organise this into coherent playlists multiplies the Turandot problem many times over. It goes on. That’s why I switched to organising the music myself in the first place, I was getting migraines trying to find everything to create playlists and not listening to any music.
I’ve been running various Linux distros on a dedicated box for several months, but again, music is the obstacle to switching. I haven’t found products that do what Audio Hijack Pro (especially) and Fission do, on Linux. Everything else on that platform works for me.
Sorry about the length, but music is the most important thing my Macs do. I’m disabled and music matters a lot. Any tips, links or advice generally would be much appreciated. I don’t mind spending a reasonable amount of money to get something that’s reliable, because iTunes doesn’t seem to be it, although I wish it was.
TIA.

Is this a NAS type of setup (of which I know very little)? Mine is not a response based upon strong technical knowledge but iTunes seems to have problems with those. Just about everybody has issues with iTunes but you say it is not fit for the purpose. What is that? I bet for 99% of people it does. Not everybody has 8TB collections they are trying to use with a RAID structured external server. iTunes is really a mass consumer piece of software. Yes, many people have expanded beyond internal drives, but NAS arrangements seem to add levels of complexity beyond a direct external drive that is Mac formatted and at most served by an Apple brand wireless router which I suspect is probably how everything is tested. Anything more is fortuitous in terms of support. Except that you say the library files are on the external drive too it sounds to me like the server is asleep when you say it cannot find files and then suddenly can when you go to find one.

My itunes can't find the music on my external hard drive.

My itunes was working fine using my external hard drive. Then I played a song that was not part of that music folder. Now itunes says it can't find any of the songs that are listed. The little evil exclamation point pops up. How can I reconnect to the hard drive without having to start all over?

Thanks for the clarification of check vs click. I guess once I saw the word "double" I stopped reading. I ended up "reloading" the drive to itunes. The interesting thing is that itunes isn't setting the location for the external drive. It is set for a folder under "my music" The actual songs aren't there, but the folders are there. When i put my external drive music to a new itunes library, i did so without copying the songs. So about 100 gig of music is in a folder that is really only about 300mb. I noticed before i restarted that the location was this folder. When i opened it, it was empty. After redoing everthing all of the songs are on the folder. I probably should have just changed it to go to the external drive like you suggested. Just for fun i changed the location to the external and bypassed that small folder. It worked great. It only took about 2 minutes to update, and it works great. I thought i had to use that stupid little folder. Thanks for all of your help!!

Help, iTunes can't find my music

I am trying to make space on my mac book pro HD because I am switching over from a 500gb 7200RPM drive to a 128 solid state HD. I moved my iTunes library over to an external drive and set the folder in preferences to point at the Itunes library on the external dive and Itunes says it can't play any of my music because it can't find the files. I have checked the file size of the file on the external and it is 15 gb - the files are there but iTunes can't connect to it.
Any one goy any ideas?
Seb

Have a look at his thread. The solution in the last post https://discussions.apple.com/message/7689469#7689469
worked for me too.

Itunes can't find my music folder

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