ITunes can't locate any of my songs

OK so I plugged my iPod into my computer to sync it because I've added some new music lately. But I'd forgotten to plug in my external HD (where I have almost all of my 4500 songs) so obviously it said all the tracks couldn't be found and stuff. So I closed iTunes, unplugged my iPod, plugged in my hard drive and plugged my iPod in again. Only all the tracks still aren't located (except a few random albums that are on the computer's HD and not the external).
I've tried a few things but the only thing that seems to work is manually locating individual tracks. I have like 4500 songs though and manually locating over 4000 of them isn't too appealing to me. Unfortunately I can't find another way to do it without nuking and rebuilding the whole library (thereby losing all my playlists and playcounts and stuff).
So basically I messed up by trying to sync when my HD wasn't plugged in, but now that it's plugged in and everything has been restarted iTunes can't relocate the files (none of them have been moved)? Is there a way to fix this without locating every single track?
If this can't be resolved I think I'm going to finally switch to Winamp and not have to deal with iTunes ever again....
Message was edited by: birdman829

Hey, make sure that your extnal hard drive is connected. Start
iTunes. No need to connect your iPod at this stage.Go into
Edit - Prefs, select the advanced tab at the top and
ensure that the path to iTunes music folder location is
set to your ext. hard drive. e.g. E:\exthd\iTunes\music. Always
ensure that your external hard disk is connected before
you start iTunes otherwise iTunes will get confused.
The 4500 songs should now be seen by iTunes.
The odd few albums/songs that are located on your c:\drive
will now have a circle next to them, indicating that the
original files cannot be found. Simply move these to the
external hard disk and re-import the individual
songs/Albums again.

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Since downloading 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod.

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Exploring the Itunes library to try to locate the missing albums/songs, I discovered that generally there is no longer any folder specified for any artist associated with a missing album [artist is the top level of organization and album is the second; compilations are in the same folder]. This is true even if I have other albums from the same artist which Itunes IS able to locate. I cannot find a single song/album by such artists anywhere in the Itunes file system, even the ones that Itunes can still play. If I right click and "get info" for an unlocatable song, I get a notification box that asks if I want to locate the file. If I click "no," next thing-- the info window for the song pops up, with all the correct info (including sort info, which I double check)! Why is Itunes able to locate all the info on the song, but is not able to play the MP3 file?
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A horrible situation. If there is nothing i will have to restore my computer to its last back up which was 4 months ago .
Thanks for any help!

Hey, make sure that your extnal hard drive is connected. Start
iTunes. No need to connect your iPod at this stage.Go into
Edit - Prefs, select the advanced tab at the top and
ensure that the path to iTunes music folder location is
set to your ext. hard drive. e.g. E:\exthd\iTunes\music. Always
ensure that your external hard disk is connected before
you start iTunes otherwise iTunes will get confused.
The 4500 songs should now be seen by iTunes.
The odd few albums/songs that are located on your c:\drive
will now have a circle next to them, indicating that the
original files cannot be found. Simply move these to the
external hard disk and re-import the individual
songs/Albums again.

ITunes can't find any of my songs now that I upgraded to 7.6

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4)you will be on the first page with the little charactor in the bottom left hand side of the page.
5)just click "OK" NOTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!
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Just a refining comment: iTunes recognizes some, but not all, songs that were transferred to the new hard drive, following iTune's instructions to change the directory then consolidate the library.
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Argh, I hate pc's...thru & thru...any suggestions before I spend a few hours re-building my playlists and deleting the non-findable song files??
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HT1751 After "Restoring iTunes Library Backup" it wont link to the files in the iTunes folder. I've followed the correct procedure, and iTunes lists all my music correctly (but with no artwork), but can't locate any of the files. Using Windows 7. Help ple

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From the top of the page where the scripts live...
The general method of use is to download the script to a folder of your choice, e.g. your Desktop, Downloads folder or create a folder at ...\iTunes\Scripts. Select a playlist or highlight some tracks in iTunes and then double-click on the script to execute it. If no specific tracks are selected the script will try to work with all tracks in the current playlist. Some scripts offer a choice of track by track confirmation of changes or fully automatic processing of the selection. Many of the scripts can optionally display a progress bar while running.
You are strongly advised to backup your entire library, or at the very least the iTunes Library.itl file, before use. Test the behaviour of your chosen script on a small group of files first to make sure it does what you want before applying it to large numbers of files.
Most builds of Windows will execute *.vbs scripts when you double-click them. If that doesn't happen then you might need to visit the Add/Remove Programs or Programs & Features control panel to enable the Windows Scripting Host. I can track down details if you have issues.
Backing up and restoring data is an area that is often glossed over. Most people don't try to learn much about it until they've lost something important. (Me too )
If your iTunes library was in the usual layout then normally copying the whole iTunes folder from the User's Music folder in the old computer to the User's Music folder in the new one will usually work fine. Ideally this is done before iTunes is installed so that there is no empty library to replace, and all settings are picked up from the old library. This post contains more details.
tt2

I Have iTunes since 2008. I have changed computers and I know have old libraries but iTunes do not locate a lot of songs when I try to play it. How can I correct this situation?

I Have iTunes since 2008. I have changed computers and I know have old libraries in my Hard Disk but iTunes do not locate a lot of songs when I try to play it. How can I correct this situation?

When iTunes say that try to find the file you want iTunes to play in your iTunes > Media folder. If iTunes offers to find others, let it. If it does not find them all you will have to find them yourself or re-add the files from your drive to iTunes (use Automatically Add to iTunes folder).
iTunes 9: Understanding the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder. - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3832 - Files put into this folder are actually moved from this folder onto the correct location in the iTunes Media folder.

ITunes can't locate files, even though they never move.

My iTunes is set to copy new files to a dedicated music folder on an internal storage drive and to keep this folder organized. I have never moved this folder or edited anything within this folder.
Now, one day I start my iTunes and I'm greeted with thousands upon thousands of little exclamation marks telling me that iTunes can't locate the files. I made sure that the drive letter didn't change and that every file was still in there. There were too many songs missing to manually locate each song, so I highlighted my entire library and deleted it (while keeping the files, obviously). Several hours after re-adding my music library, everything was good and like it once was.
Not even a day later, I re-open iTunes to find that all the exclamation marks were back and that it could not locate any of my files again. This time I decide to go through all the steps properly by clearing the folder where the xml files are located, uninstalling iTunes, moving my music to an external hard drive and making sure there was no trace of iTunes left.
Ready to start again, I installed iTunes, set where I liked my files to be stored and set my other preferences (including "organize my iTunes folder" and "copy new files to iTunes Folder"). I then re-added my music and spent a day waiting for it to copy to the new iTunes folder. After this I deleted the folder that contained my originals and was left with a fresh install of iTunes and all my music was where I wanted it.
This worked for almost a whole month before thousands of songs went "missing" again. I simply don't know what to do. I can't keeping re-adding my library again and again because a few thousand songs went missing. Each time I do it, it just takes longer and longer and i'm sick of it.
Any help with my problem would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Presumably the location of the iTunes media folder is still correctly set in preferences when this happens?
One thing you can do to investigate this is to select a track that can't be found and go to Get Info>>Summary tab.
This will show you where iTunes thinks it is and the name of the file. Now find the file in Windows Explorer and compare the location and file name are they the same?
A thing that occurs to me is that you have other software on your PC that is able to move/rename files. Do you have anything like that?
Windows Media player has a check box that allows the renaming of files in Options, it's worth looking for that.

ITunes Can't Locate Original File - 7.7 error?

hoping someone out there can help me....
basically, I have 2 external hard drives. the first one is a 160GB hard drive, the second one is a 250GB hard drive. initially I had all of my music on the 160GB, but when it got too full I copied everything over on the 250GB drive, so I could add more music to it. everything's been working fine for 2 years on the 250GB drive until this weekend when all of the sudden, iTunes is now looking for the music on the old drive again, saying that it can't find the original file. the songs are all on the new drive, but for some reason it will only look for them on the old one. So - if I have BOTH drives on, everything works fine. If I turn the old drive off, iTunes can't locate 3/4 of my music. it's frustrating because all of the old stuff is on the new drive but iTunes won't see it. I've even tried copying some of the stuff from the old drive onto the new drive and itunes still seems to be looking for it the old drive even when I change the pathway to the new drive in the general preferences.
the only thing I can think of is:
1) buy a new larger drive and cut and paste everything onto it. not sure that that would fix it.
2) reinstall itunes, but I'm afraid of losing my settings and all of the movies,
apps, games I've bought etc.
anyone have any advice? is it a library file issue?

Yeah,
I've upgraded to 7.7 and have a large library of tracks on an external drive. I added them manually to the library - rather tedious, it took me about 3 days!
I was careful to choose the iTunes folder in the correct location and I chose to uncheck the "keep iTunes organised" box as it messes up where things are kept. I'm now starting to get ! against about 25% of the library. I really don't want to manually re-direct it to about 5,000 tracks. Is there any way this can be done en masse or is this a 7.7 bug?
This is a real pain. Can anyone help?
curly

ITunes can't find any of my music

I've been using iTunes for a long time now. I keep all my music on an external (portable) drive with the exception of podcasts or downloaded music from the store. All of a sudden iTunes can't find any of my music. Everytime I click on a song to play that is stored on that drive I get the "!" mark and a box that says itunes couldn't find the song, do I want to search for it. I really don't want to have to do that to all 3k songs. My drive is fine, the songs are there. Could my library file have been currupted? This every happen to anyone else?

Do what Katrina says and that will most likely fix it.
Usually, when this happens, it's because a new device has been added via USB, like even a thumb drive.
When windows boots up, it assigns drive letters to the external devices. If it does it out of order from what it used to do, that effectively changes the location of your music files.
So if you've added anything to your computer via a different USB port, try taking that out. Of course you'd have to reboot after that.
But the permanent solution is what Katrina says, but you might need more detailed instructions on how to achieve what she says.
Look at the XML file to see what the drive is supposed to be. Open My Computer and match it with what your external harddrive is. If they don't match, there's your answer.
Once you fix that, your exclamation marks will disappear; you don't have to re-import or anything silly like that.

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

I moved all my music from c: drive(because it was full) to an external harddrive and now itunes can't find any of my music. Is there a way to get Itunes to find music on external drive without having to place all the music back onto the c: drive? Thanks

Hopefully you moved the entire iTunes Media (or iTunes Music) folder to a new path on your external drive. Copy your iTunes library folder out to the root of the external drive, e.g. X:\iTunes (where X: is your external drive), then move the media folder inside it. Hold down shift as you start iTUnes and keep holding untila asked to choose or create a library. Choose the library at X:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl. Should all be good.
Failing that, download and run my FindTracks script and point it at the new location of your media folder.
tt2

Itunes can't locate files after I listen to it on the Ipod

It seems that every time I listen to a song, I notice that Itunes can't locate it anymore. When I go to Itunes and look in my music folder, there is an exclamation point next to the song. When I click on it, the error message reads "cannot locate file, would you like to locate it now". At first it was only one or two songs, now it's over 50! These songs are still on my Ipod,just no longer in Itunes. I know how to recover the music b/c it's in my hard drive, I just don't want to sit there and find all these songs all over again. Help please.

I too have been having the same problem... I am a new ipod owner and same with itunes. And being a new owner and user I got the new itunes. It has done the exclimation point since the first day I got it. But mine is simple to fix. I mearly just exit out of itunes and re-open it. I dont evn have to wait at all. It shows the exclimation point with about 20 of my songs and it hasnt gotten in my way yet. But the main problem that makes me mad is that my ipod is only 2 weeks old but I tried to get some of my friends music and she has the older version of itunes and my ipod ONLY works on the new version. Very frustrating if you ask me.
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ITunes can't locate any of my songs

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