Itunes will not add folder to library - no error messages

Question

I have an archive of about 4 thousand albums and have decided to use Itunes to manage them. Windows Media Player is terrible for large archives - it's database is poorly designed. Anyway, when I tell Itunes to add a folder (containing 1000 artists each in its folder)to its library it stops at around seventy every time. Also within the 70 artists folders it ingested I have several albums that didn't ingest.
what's going on?
on a related subject, Itunes does not seem to be smart enough to know that it already has a song in its library that you are trying to ingest.
thanks for any help!
Patrick
  Windows XP Pro  

Answer 1

iTUnes for windows has a limit, not sure exactly what number that limit is yet but if you goto file>add folder to library it only catches so many til it reaches a limit then it stops.
Also iTUnes is designed to add whats called "Duplicates" because it takes for granted your the smarter one. If you had to songs that are somewhat the same, one is the original, one is a remix, the tags might not note this. You may have .... Britney SPears - hit me one more time then another one thats a remix BUT the tags say the same thing "Britney SPears - hit me one more time" So instead of stoping the second song from coming in, it lets it in so later you can edit the tags to denote its a remix.
Now since you have such a large swath of music all in there own lil folders, Id think the easy thing to do is let iTUnes auto search your system and add them all. Theres no feature like this built into iTUnes UI but theres a feature like this when you delete a hidden pref file. When this file is deleted and you open itunes again, you get a set up wizard, it in this wizard you get the option to have iTUnes search the whole system for music and media files.
Go here to B noirs post about deleting this pref file http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=531850&tstart=0