Itunes can't locate music + Trying to get into Apple Discussions

What's going on with the website for Apple Discussions?? Trying to get here is like jumping through a million hoops...what a pain.
Whenever I try to play a song in my Itunes library now, I am told the song can't be located. I switched back from version 7 to 6.05. My songs are in the right place, I've tried consolidating the library, cutting and pasting, etc.
Why can't Itunes find my songs now?
Any help is really appreciated, thanks.
Chip

solved

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ITunes can't locate music files

Any music that was copied into my iTunes music folder cannot be located. Anytime that I try to play the file from iTunes, it shows an error message, requests that I locate the file, and then proceeds to tell me that I need to format my hard drive. When I try to open my iTunes music folder directly, my computer freezes and then after 10 minutes informs me that my hard drive needs to be formatted. I never had this problem until I downloaded the new version of iTunes. This is only going on with music I have copied into my iTunes folder, which is all the CDs I have or had. Many of these CDs I no longer physically have. I have tried to use a previous iTunes library to fix the problem. I have also moved my preferences files to the desktop as suggested in another thread, but neither have worked. I am not having any other problems with my computer that would encourage me to format my hard drive besides this issue. I would appreciate any help possible with this predicament.
Compaq Presario V2000 Windows XP AMD 64, 60GB

Any music that was copied into my iTunes music folder cannot be located. Anytime that I try to play the file from iTunes, it shows an error message, requests that I locate the file, and then proceeds to tell me that I need to format my hard drive. When I try to open my iTunes music folder directly, my computer freezes and then after 10 minutes informs me that my hard drive needs to be formatted. I never had this problem until I downloaded the new version of iTunes. This is only going on with music I have copied into my iTunes folder, which is all the CDs I have or had. Many of these CDs I no longer physically have. I have tried to use a previous iTunes library to fix the problem. I have also moved my preferences files to the desktop as suggested in another thread, but neither have worked. I am not having any other problems with my computer that would encourage me to format my hard drive besides this issue. I would appreciate any help possible with this predicament.
Compaq Presario V2000 Windows XP AMD 64, 60GB

ITunes can't locate music files THAT I CAN

Last night, when I opened iTunes, each song I clicked on gave me a "!" next to it, followed by this message:
"The song XYZ could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
Well, I know exactly where the song is, which is where all the songs are and have been for some time on my LaCie external drive. They are, in fact, still there. When I go to a music file through the Finder and double-click the file name, it plays--through iTunes--and is recognized by iTunes thereafter. I could do this for all 2,500 songs, but I have a life to live in the next three to four years.
Why is this happening and, more importantly, what can be done about it?

this can also happen anytime the external drive is not available... i have 1/2 my library on an external drive and whenever the power goes out in my neighborhood, iTunes temporarilly looses the link to the external drive... my neighborhood was built in the 1920s, and the power goes out many times a year... i use an old powerbook for my iTunes computer, which i keep plugged into my stereo... when the power hiccups, the external drive goes down, but the powerbook continues on it's battery... if iTunes or the external drive get too confused by going up and down, then i just powercycle the external drive and reboot my powerbook and everything has normally gone back to normal... the power issues are part of the reason i wanted to keep as much as i could on the internal powerbook drive... and i keep everything backed up...
anyway, i'll try you suggestion for the "option" on launch... i had to replace my external drive which finally died (from 2001)... so now i need to relink the files back to iTunes, hopefully not manually since i have about 2500 files to fix... i did copy all the files from the internal disc to the new external drive and merged the libraries, then tried using the iTunes preferences to point to the folder in the external drive... but that didn't work in my case... it still sees 1/2 of the files still in the internal drive and still has "!" for all the files on the external drive...
for tlee61, this makes me wonder if you might not need to check the iTunes preferences to see where it is looking for your files. if you set it up to store all files on the external disc, and it is set up to copy in the files to the iTunes library, then that option in the preference file for the library location might have gotten changed inadvertently... if you have iTunes set up to NOT copy in the files, and your files are in random locations on the external drive, that may be much harder to solve... i'm not positive of the best approach... i think there may be an option for iTunes to search the drives for music, like when someone installs/runs iTunes for the 1st time... but i'm not sure, off the top of my head, how to trigger that... i may be looking for that option if i can't seem to figure out another way to relink my files... but i'm afraid that it will try to either copy everything from the external drive to the internal drive, where there is no more space, or that it will try to copy the files on the internal drive to the external drive, where i've already merged the files (and eliminated some duplications)...
i very much want to keep all the metadata... so i'm hesitent to experiment blindly too much since i don't want to do something that "imports" all the songs, but looses all the metadata... in my case, it would be easier to relink the files manually than attempt to recreate all the metadata...
if i find a solution besides just manually relinking files, i'll let you know...
i expect there is a way to solve this...
luck to us both-

ITunes can't locate music I have stored in the iCloud

I am experiencing the following problem. In iTunes some of my "songs" have an exclamation point beside them even though they are stored in the cloud. I see the dialog box that asks if I want to locate the music and I have found if I hit the cancel button, the music suddenly has a cloud icon and starts to play. This is weird, and I'd love to know how to fix this.
Thanks

Yes, you are correct. The songs are only stored in the iCloud. Which is what I want. I don't want to have all my library sitting on my iMac and in iCloud. Am I missing something?
There are plenty of songs on my hard drive with the iCloud symbol and they play without a problem. I also have some songs sitting on my hard drive. And they aren't a problem. THE PROBLEM is the tracks that have the exclamation mark and will play from the iCloud after I press "Cancel" in the "Locate" dialog box. I hope I'm explaining this clearly....

ITunes can't locate ⅔ of my Music Library -- How to repair?

I manually reorganized the iTunes Media Folder on my MacBook Air because everything was all jumbled up in the Music folder -- Songs, Movies, Mobile apps etc. everything all mixed up in Music folder. I manually dragged the Movie, iTunes U, Mobile Applications etc.Folders out of Music Folder and put everything into iTunes Media Folder. The same order as it is on my desktop iMac. Now iTunes can't locate about 1/2 of my Music library. Everything else (movies, TV shows etc.) works fine, but iTunes lost the location of 1/2my music library. I get the message "The song "ABC" could not be used because the original file could not be located. Would you like to locate it"
Is there a way to reset iTunes so that it knows where all the songs are (they are all in the music folder which is in the iTunes Media Folder). If I have to locate every song individually it will take weeks.
File ->Library -> Organize Library -> click Consolidate and Reorganize files in iTunes Media didn't seem to work. Isn't this the way to let iTunes know where all those songs it can't locate are?
Kindly advise if you know how to slove this.
Thank you.
P.S. Still using Mountain Lion on this computer

I manage my music manually by turning off the advanced preferences for iTunes managing my music and copying it to the iTunes folder when adding it to the library. Realize if you do this you are taking responsibility for keeping track of your music -- you will have to be organized. If you want to move your library you will have to track down all the files. Your files will retain their original names and folder names and structure, so make sure it makes sense. There's a few other disadvantages which I can't remember right now. Even with manually managing you still occasionally get a broken link, and my experience is all with iTunes 7.5 which I still use. I may be wrong but I suspect newer versions of iTunes are trying to do more at one time with all the store and cloud interface and may be more "delicate".
If you are downloading from Apple or ripping a CD, iTunes will put it in its normal folder structure anyway, though you can remove it from there.
The various scripts on the Dougscripts web site were written at different stages. You have to read about iTunes version compatibility in the blurb about each script. I don't see how you end up with multiple libraries using hte scripts.
The .itl file can reset itself but not with what you are doing. If you had moved your whole library and broken all the links you could have found just one and iTunes might have offered to find the others based upon the same structure (not something it will do if you manually manage, by the way).

Just finished using iTunes, closed out and then tried to get back in. Got this message "he iTunes library .itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file." How can I get back into iTunes ?

I just finished using iTunes, closed out and then tried to get ack in. Got this message "The iTunes library .9tl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file." How can I get back ino iTunes ?

I actually figured it out...I had to go to the iTunes Library Extras.itdb file and give myself permission to have full control. THEN, I could go and estore a previos version. Once I had done this, I got the same message for iTunes Library Genius.itdb . . . I did the same thing with it and Voila'!!
Hope this helps...
SVT

Im trying to get an Apple id account so that I can get apps, but all it tells me is "Please contact iTunes support to complete this transaction". What do I do?

Im trying to get an Apple id account so that I can get apps, but all it tells me is "Please contact iTunes support to complete this transaction". What do I do?

Why not do as it tells you to do and contact itunes support?

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.
Hp Windows XP

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 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.

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

Since downloading Itunes 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod. I have a MacBook Air, Lion OS, Itunes version 11.0.1 (12). I didn't see this problem with older versions of Itunes. I do not manually change the organization of the Itunes library. I use the Itunes "add to library" feature or Amazon's MP3 downloader. Sometimes, however, I have changed song information in the "info" window. Such as unchecking the "compilation" button and sorting by artist (for that song), so that I can search by artist in the top pane of Itunes (otherwise the song is sorted in an album that is a "compilation," but not under the name of the artist who sang a particular song. I've done this without problem in the past, but perhaps the newer version of Itunes can't handle the changes I made and has lost track of where the older version of Itunes stored such songs? How do I fix all these older previously ok changes if that's the case... If I could just find where they are stored in Itunes it would be easier perhaps. I've looked in compilations, unknown artist, and so forth to no avail. And Finder search can't find them.
Details: suddenly, many songs are marked with "!," denoting that Itunes cannot find the songs in the library and cannot play them. Oddly, my iPod CAN play the "unlocatable" songs with no problem (it has been synched "post problem"). So the songs are still there somewhere in the Itunes library. This problem occurs by album, that is, all songs from the same album become unlocatable, although different albums by the same artist may still be found and played.
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?
Using Finder I cannot locate the songs that are unlocatable by Itunes (except the original download files in the Amazon MP3 folder). Finder is, of course, able to find Itunes songs that Itunes has no trouble locating. What's up?! My iPod can find them just fine. I just synched my iPod again and am playing the "unlocatable" songs right now.
I can "fix" most of these files by downloading files one by one into Itunes from my Amazon download folder or from my CDs using the "add to library" feature. In fact, it is strange. But this will take a very long time! And what if this problem continues recurring? But something strange happens when I implement this fix. I added one song to Itunes (from the Amazon MP3 folder, using "add to library") for one "unlocatable" album of Pete Seegers. After adding that one song, I looked at the Itunes music library and discovered that a folder for Pete Seeger (which was not there before I added the song) had been newly created, or restored. In this folder was the one song I had just added, but ALSO all my other Seeger albums that had previously remained "locatable" by Itunes. But the other "unlocatable" songs were not restored, unfortunately.

I have found a workaround. When I create a new playlist, iTunes allows me to add or remove songs from existing playlists for a short while. Then, for some reason it prevents me from adding and deleting songs again. Not sure why. Go figure.

I am trying to get into my iTunes account to change credit cards but an unable to???

I am trying to get into the iTunes store to change my credit card number but can only get into the store showing products.

Hello there Sweebs44,
It sounds like you are tapping the Game Center app to open it, but the screen is blank. I recommend signing out of your account:
Go to Settings > Game Center, where you can:
Sign out (tap your Apple ID)
From: iPhone User Guide
http://help.apple.com/iphone/7/#/iph6c493cac
Then close all the running apps:
iOS: Force an app to close
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5137
Double-click the Home button.
Swipe left or right until you have located the app you wish to close.
Swipe the app up to close it.
When you have done that restart the phone sign back into your account and try again:
iOS: Turning off and on (restarting) and resetting
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1430
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Take care,
Sterling

Trying to get into the app store and it asks for my password. The problem is that it is showing an Apple ID I don't use ghosted in. I can't figure out how to use my correct ID.

Trying to get into the App Store to update some apss. It asks for my password but the problem is that it is showing ghosted an Apple ID I don't use. Can't figure out how to fix it.

You installed a hacked app, originally from the Mac App Store. It contains the receipt for a different app, downloaded using an account that you don't control. You need to identify and remove the hacked app.
Important: The app you need to remove is not necessarily the one named in the App Store alert. For example, if the App Store says you need to update "Twitter," the hacked app may be "Angry Birds" or something else entirely. Don't make any assumptions about which app you're looking for. To find it, you have to carry out a systematic search.
Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:
kMDItemAppStoreHasReceipt=1
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
In the Finder, press command-F to open a search window, or select
File ▹ Find
from the menu bar. In the search window, select
Search: This Mac
from the row of tokens below the toolbar. Below that is a popup menu initially showing Kind. From that menu, select Other...
A sheet will drop down. In that sheet, select Raw Query and click OK or press return.
Now there will be a text box to the right of popup menu. Click in that box and paste (command-V).
The search window will show all the App Store products you've installed. Compare those search results with the list of your purchases from the App Store. To see the complete list, you may need to unhide hidden purchases. If any apps were download from the App Store using other Apple ID accounts that you control, sign in to the store under each of those ID's and check the purchases.
At least one of the items listed in the search window is not among your purchases in the App Store. Move each such item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator password. Empty the Trash.
Log out and log back in. Test.

I home shared from my PC to my new Mac and now my iTunes can't locate the original files?

It was working fine for about 12 hours but now my iTunes can't locate any of the files. None of my songs will play, even those I downloaded directly from a CD. Help?

It sounds like this is much more than an iTunes problem. I suggest you post in the operating system forum version for your computer (we have no idea which OS you are running nor what model computer).

Trying to install itunes on win 8.1. keep getting error apple application support not found. asks me to uninstall and install itunes. i tried several times and keep getting same error.

trying to install itunes on win 8.1. keep getting error apple application support not found. asks me to uninstall and install itunes. i tried several times and keep getting same error.

With the Error 2, let's try a standalone Apple Application Support install. It still might not install, but fingers crossed any error messages will give us a better idea of the underlying cause of the issue.
Download and save a copy of the iTunesSetup.exe (or iTunes64setup.exe) installer file to your hard drive:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
Download and install the free trial version of WinRAR suitable for your PC (there's a 32-bit Windows version and a 64-bit Windows version):
http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
Right-click the iTunesSetup.exe (or iTunes64Setup.exe), and select "Extract to iTunesSetup" (or "Extract to iTunes64Setup"). WinRAR will expand the contents of the file into a folder called "iTunesSetup" (or "iTunes64Setup").
Go into the folder and doubleclick the AppleApplicationSupport.msi to do a standalone AAS install.
Does it install properly for you? If so, see if iTunes will launch without the error now.
If instead you get an error message during the install, let us know what it says. (Precise text, please.)

Itunes can't locate music + Trying to get into Apple Discussions

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