ITunes randomly linking to non-song files... a real curve-ball of an issue

I have been having problems with songs in my iTunes library suddenly not playing. When I select "Reveal in Finder" the file that it revealed is often a driver in my library - worse still, the song is then no-where to be found using spot-light but it can be manually found in my iTunes library.
If I re-import it back into iTunes, it still cannot play. Reveal in finder takes me right back to the same driver. In the finder it looks like this:
This happened before and I rebuilt my iTunes library but now it has started to happen again.
My library is on an external drive. I have run a disc repair to fix permissions on that drive to no avail.
It seems to be random in terms of what songs this happens to.
It is also happening to Podcast files although in that case they tend to link to single audio samples that i use for unrelated audio work - such as a single horn blast etc.
I suspect that this might have something to do with a secondary external drive that I hook up on occasion for time machine syncing. This is just a hunch.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Thanks. Doug_
Message was edited by: Douglas Suiter

I have also noticed that the affected songs will play in Quicklook from the finder, but the cover art is missing. For example, I have the sound track to the Piano but three songs are affected by this issue, as illustrated below:
Message was edited by: Douglas Suiter

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Exclamation mark and the message "itunes could not find your song file

Hi everyone. I've tried doing a search but couldn't find this exact problem. I hope i'm not about to annoy everyone with a question that has been asked a thousand times before.
my problem is that every now A/some song file(s).that are already in my itunes library and played fine and synced with iphones ipod app fine. well sometimes I get this little exclamation mark on A/some song(s) in the library and the message "itunes could not find your song file would you like to locate it" and when i do and it always seems to be in what itunes find box locates first anyway.......( I'm paraphrasing...........i forget exactly what it says)........the funny thing is when i try and locate the files for itunes they are exactly where they are supposed to be........ and i've been able to put the mp3 back into the itunes library in the past, but now a certain mp3 will not show up in itunes library or play. like i said I can locate it fine, i've never renamed any folders or mp3's. other mp3's in this folder play fine , but i've had exclamation marks on some of them in the past, it seems that i know of 2 folders in my music folder that always have this problem with the mp3's in them at ramdom .
does anyone know why itunes is doing this?................it happens sometimes with downloaded music and sometimes with ripped music................sometimes a single track and sometimes just a few single tracks .........it's begining to become slighty annoying........
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Helpful but i was reading some posts and threads about consolidate library and it seems that if the song is not in the itunes library it will not consolidate it.i've had songs in the library that i deleted from the library and i remember getting a message when i do that action if i would like to delete it from the music folder as well ( in other words trash it completly from harddrive or do i just want to delete the song from the library and still keep it in the music folder but i guess those actions have little effect if you didn't have the song in itunes music folder,, but another folder. except for the part that it will remove the song from the library. if there was a way to consolidate your music folder(s) into the itunes folder that would be cool. and still leave your itunes library with out those songs you didn't want in there, but wanted to leave in the music folder.

Itunes can not find original song file

Suddenly my itunes can not find the song's original file.
I see that the file is on the driver but when I double click on Itunes I get this mesage:
"the song could not be used because the original file could not be found.
Any helpers out there?
THKS

I've been experiencing this problem for a while now. It happens with version 7.1 but it started with an earlier version of iTunes 7. I never experienced it before iTunes 7. In my experience the number of files iTunes "thinks" is missing increases with the length of time iTunes has been running between restarts (I usually just put my system to sleep overnight so it can "run" for days on end). When it first started happening I used to go and find the "missing" music file(s) and reconnect it(them). Then, one day, I found a flood of "missing" songs. I decided I had nothing to lose by stopping iTunes and restarting it. When I restarted iTunes none of my songs were missing! This indicated to me that it's the iTunes code that's active after a restart that has a bug that makes it lose track of the music files.
To check, I looked in the Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml file for songs while they were being reported as "missing", and, lo and behold, the song file locations are still there. iTunes must reread the xml file when it starts up and this cures the problem, at least in my case. (Too bad it doesn't use the file while it's running.)
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HT1349 iTunes randomly skips hlaf a song in the middle of playing them, how do I change this?

While playing a song, iTunes randomly skips to the next song.This only happens with cirtian songs and I'm using a pc if that makes a difference. Is there a setting somewhere where I can turn this action off? This does not happen with my other computer.
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Now, is it synced via wireless or USB?
When I upgraded my 4 to iOS 7, I had that very problem. The phone said all my music was on it, but when I tapped on a song, it would show the icon as though it was playing and after a couple if seconds, it would skip to the next song.
Here's what I did: Reconnect and do another sync. Or, back-up your phone, do a restore and then trying syncing your files again.
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ITunes randomly replaces movies and songs

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The songs themselves have been moved into the movies folder, where they now each have their own folder and have "(HD)" added to their file name.
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Another user on this forum identified a cause and solution to this problem. iTunes freezes when playing songs which have channels encoded in "joint stereo" format. If these songs are re-encoded in "stereo" format, they play instantly without any freezing issues. However, it seems tedious for users with large libraries to go through thousands of songs and re-encode them to address this problem.
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You apparently missed the link on that page ("+Update: Thanks to the commenters, here's the windows fix+") that gets you to here:
http://blog.ocramc.com/2008/09/itunes-8-hide-genre-in-browseritunes-store-links- on-windows.html
Both XP and Vista instructions are provided.
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David, welcome to discussions! You may find this link from MacMuse helpful on how to move iTunes to a different drive, either internal or external. I used this information to move my music to an EHD on my old PC where it worked just fine. One trick, you must always boot up the EHD prior to opening iTunes or iTunes will revert the location of the iTunes music folder back to the main drive & you will have a bunch of dead links to your song files. Post back if you have any questions.
Oops, forgot the link!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121879
Message was edited by: StarDeb55

Haven't lost song files, but have lost playlists and want to restore!

I store my songs (2300 in total) on a NAS drive. Two days ago, it was necessary for me to detach the NAS drive from my system. When it was re-attached, for some reason it came to life with a name that was a modified version of its prior name. Consequently, when I opened iTunes, although all of the songs in my library were listed, when i clicked on them, iTunes couldn't find them. A dialog box asked if i wanted to navigate to where the song file was located. Itunes no longer knew where to look for the file. I clicked on "Edit" and then "Preferences" and then selected "advanced" to see where iTunes thought the music files were located. The location was identified as the "Music" folder located on my computer's hard drive--not the NAS drive. (In the music folder, I have perhaps 20 songs that are remnants from a bygone day.) Within "advanced", I changing the location from the C drive to the NAS drive and thought that iTunes would then recognize the song files on the NAS. It didn't. I renamed the itl file as "Old Itunes library" with the intent of following a suggestion on the web to modify the song locations in the XML file. I then, for reasons that i can't explain, re-opened iTunes. When I re-opened iTunes, there were no songs at all listed--iTunes was blank. I opened windows explorer and noted that Itunes had created a new itl and XML file. It must have written over the "good" XML file. I didn't think that this would be a problem since I had saved the old itl file which i understand is the file which is really responsible for keeping the library organized.
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Do what it told you to do - restore.
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Is it possible to associate artwork with songs in iTunes without embedding images in song files?
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If all has gone well then the library is now portable. Once you've migrated the data to a new system you can copy the library files back to their usual internal location if you find that having them on the external drive affects performance...
tt2

ITunes changes links to music files to the wrong (and random) location

Recently, I've noticed that iTunes (8.2) skips certain songs in my iTunes library. No ! shows up to indicate it cannot find the file. Rather, the file link is to a completely random location on my harddrive where no music files exist. I'll link to a photo a previous poster put on the web which has the same odd file links. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3459/327398302018d78347a5o.jpg
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Remove the compilations indicator from the tracks and iTunes should relocated the files for you. Make a playlist to pick up all the tracks in the album, highlight all the songs and right click on the selection, choose Get Info and when you are asked if you want to edit multiple items say yes, In the box that opens change Compilation to "No" and press OK.

ITunes Lost Link to Song Files

Hi!
iTunes has lost the link to the actual song files, as well as my purchased music. The song file is still on the HD, but iTunes thinks it's missing. I can reconnect them one by one via the: "The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" dialog, but I don't want to spend my weekend doing that.
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I've uploaded a newer version that might catch that error. For some background on the script look at this thread.
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ITunes randomly deletes songs or whole albums

I've been having this problem for quite some time now, maybe a year..I just thought I was misplacing the songs at first. However now I know for a fact that iTunes is randomly deleting entire albums. How can I stop this? I've thought about locking the folder, but then I probably wouldn't be able to update stuff as well.
Its extremely annoying because some albums are burns of physical discs and some are ones that I bought online. The physical are OK because I can just grab the original disc, but the ones I bought online I have to repurchase them.
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ITunes randomly linking to non-song files... a real curve-ball of an issue

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