Lost itunes library

I recently had a virus on my computer and had to reinstall the operating system. I did not have my library backed up (stupid). Is there a way to transfer my music from ipods to itunes library?

Hi, I got the "damaged file" error message one day and found out that I had a few viruses on my PC. Well, I fixed those, but now my library is gone. I have the folder where the songs are, but how do I get them back into iTunes?
Thanks for any help! There were a lot of songs that I'd rather not put on all over again.

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My itunes won't launch even after reinstalling. Looked in itunes folder and somehow lost itunes library? HELP!

My itunes won't launch even after reinstalling. Looked in itunes folder and somehow lost itunes library? HELP!

The first thing I'd suggest is to get a good antispyware checker and give it a go at your system. Some recent spyware has been reported by other users to shut down iTunes or prevent it from launching. From user reports, Ewido seems to be the best at catching it. You can download a free version of Ewido here.
If that doesn't cure the problem, try deleting the iTunes preference files:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunes.pref
and
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Data\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iTunes.pref
You might have to turn on "show hidden files" to find them. (Right click "my computer", select open, select Tools menu -> Folder Options. Select View tab, "show hidden files" radio button is in the center scrolling panel.) Delete them or if you want to be able to put them back if it doesn't help, drag them to some other location. This will force iTunes to run the setup assistant the next time you launch iTunes. Note that you'll have to go back and set any preferences you've changed from the default.
If that still doesn't work, try this:
Bugie: Perform a Thorough & Complete Uninstall and Reinstall of iTunes/QuickTime.
Hope this helps.

TS1967 When trying to recover a lost iTunes library file, the programme moved all the normal contents of iTunes folder to the desktop. Now what must I do?

When trying to recover a lost iTunes library file, the programme moved all the normal contents of iTunes folder to the desktop. Now what must I do? There is no iTunes Library.itl file. On the desktop it is labelled iTunes Library.xml. Several others files have appeared there too including iTunes Music Library.xml
Before I can use the programme is it necessary to take another step?
Thanks for advice.

Don't worry. I'm all for caution. I guess I should have asked a little more about what steps you took while trying to recover your lost library?
The permissions thing may be a red herring, but if there is a problem with file access rights to the designated media folder iTunes has been known to place files on the desktop instead since it can access this location. The most common cause for such problems is working with a folder on an NTFS drive via a differnt account or on a different computer. In the normal course of events folders created inside user profiles have limited rights for other users.
Here are the typical layouts for the iTunes folders:
Normally the iTunes folder will be created at <User's Music>\iTunes with the media folder inside it. The library files should all appear in the same place so your comment about there not being an iTunes Library.itl file is confusing. Is it just the case that the .itl extension is hidden? The two .xml files makes sense from the above and indicates that the active library is not in <User's Music>\iTunes, but you have a recovered file from when it was.
If, in fact, the situation is that your desktop is acting as the main iTunes folder, and contains the library file, Album Artwork, iTunes Media and (optionally) Previous iTunes Libraries folders, with all other content being inside the iTunes Media folder, then it should be relativly easy to rearrange your into the correct shape and move them to the correct location.
If things are more complex, with something other than a library folder containing a media folder, then reestablishing the normal order is more complicated. The iTunes consolidate function is used to bring copies of files stored outside of the media folder into the media folder. It may sometimes be needed as part of the process of tidying up, however it leaves behind originals. There are circumstances where there isn't room for two complete sets of the media files on the same drive which is why I suggested the script might be useful as it produces the same results for the library without leaving the originals for manual clear up.
I think before you do anything however, we should get a clearer picture of exactly what is where. Could you perhaps take a screenshot of the desktop and post it here? Take a look at this post on making a split library portable. The same techniques I outline there can be used to lick your library into shape, it is just a question of working out which to use in which order for the best effect.
tt2

Hard Drive Failure, so I've lost ITunes Library. Ipod more up-to-date how do I transfer music from IPod to library?

Hi,
I had a hard drive failure on my old PC and I couldn't retrieve anything. I have purchased a new PC and downloaded itunes (Version I'm not use to which isn't helping) and signed in however it only has my purchased songs on the cloud which I need to download into my library from cloud. However I have thousands of songs that I imported into my old library from CD's etc which is no lost apart from all the data held on my ipod.
So my Ipod is more up-to-date then my library now. When I look to sync my ipod it says everything will be removed and will be replaced with content from the library. I've had a look around and I can't see a way to get my music from my ipod to my library.
Is there anything I can do, please help?
Thanks

See:
Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities
or
Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device: Apple Support Communities

Recovering lost iTunes library

My husband is a PC and I am a MAC.
He has lost his entire iTunes music library from his PC, after making a purchase from iTunes Store. His library is still on his iPod.
The message says his iPod is synched with another computer. He has never plugged his iPod into another computer. He has downloaded/synched all purchases but wants all his other music that was downloaded from CD's.
How can he fix this?
Notes: I recently added Apple TV to the household and have several shared computers. My iTunes library is tied to the Apple TV. We tried to add his library, but did not succeed. Not sure if this caused problem?
Thank you!

It has always been very basic to always maintain a backup copy of your computer files/docs/pics/music/etc.
Use the backup to put everything back.
The music sync is one way - computer to ipod. The exception being itunes purchases.
You can try a forum search, as this is asked very often.
The forum search bar is on the right side of this page.

Help please. Lost itunes library.xml file

Hello,
I have windows 7 and have failed in my attempts to locate my itunes library xml file. I think I lost it when I transferred music from one computer to the next. Online I have seen a tutorial on how to find it, user - my music - itunes. However it's not there. I was trying to sync my itunes music to android, but cannot do so unless I have the xml file. Please note, i am not a computer savvy guy. please don't make it to technical.
Thanks
- Anthony

I already have itunes installed and all my music, playlists and podcasts which work fine, but the media cannot be transferred onto my phone via Isyncr due to not having the itunes library.xml file. You are saying all I have to do is get the itl file from my old computer and save it onto my new one. then re-download itunes and it should work?
Edit: I found my old computer and still cannot locate .xml or itl file.
Looked in users/music/itunes music. and nothing saying xml or itl is there.

Broken Hard Disk, lost iTunes library

Recently my hard disk stop working. So I lost my iTunes library. It was practically empty since I manually managed all songs.
So now I have to create a new library but when I try to check the option "Manually manage music and videos" iTunes ask me to format my iphone.
Why should it delete the iphone content? Will I loose all my apps?

iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iOS device or iPod to a computer - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1848 - only media purchased from iTunes Store
Sync transfer is one way, computer to device, matching the device content to the content on the computer (except purchased content as mentioned above). For transferring other items from an i-device to a computer you have to use third party commercial software. Examples (check the web for others; this is not an exhaustive listing, nor do I have any idea if they are any good):
- MusicRescue - http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/products/musicrescue/ - Mac & Windows
- Sharepod (free) - http://download.cnet.com/SharePod/3000-2141_4-10794489.html?tag=mncol;2 - Windows
- Snowfox/iMedia - http://www.mac-videoconverter.com/imedia-transfer-mac.html - Mac & PC
- Post by Zevoneer: iPod media recovery options - https://discussions.apple.com/message/11624224 - this is an older post and many of the links are also for old posts, so bear this in mind when reading them.
Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3141
In general do not regard your i-device as a reliable unique storage for your media. It is not a backup device and everything is structured around you maintaining a backup of your media on a computer backup.

New hard drive on pc lost itunes library

i have just had to put a new hard drive on my pc which has lost my itunes library?how do i get this back because it only shows up new songs ive put on.

Hello, a1p2r3.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
There are a couple options available to you to transfer purchased media to your computer. Below, I have included a couple articles that outline this process.
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iOS device or iPod to a computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1848
Please note that this feature works only for items that were purchased on the iTunes Store. Any items imported from audio CDs or acquired from other sources will not copy from your iPod to the iTunes library.
Download past purchases
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519
Cheers,
Jason H.

How to recover lost itunes library

During iphone software update I have lost my itunes library for 2 iphones. How can I recover my full libabry?

You can either sync it from iTunes (you have been backing up the purchased music to iTunes, haven't you) or go to iTunes app > More > Purchases and download the music.

Lost Itune library from laptop

We have our song libraby (mostly purchased music) intact on the desktop computer. When we recently got a new laptop, I was able to duplicate the same library on there too. I don't remember now exactly how I did that, but I know I had to "authorize" that computer.
Due to letting the laptop battery run too low, I lost the Itunes library there and would like to restore it. I don't want to move the desktop library, I just want to copy it back to the laptop.
Thanks,
Lenny

Probably the most straightforward way to copy iTunes from one computer to another computer is to network the two devices and copy over your iTunes folder. This works fine if you have been using iTunes to completely manage your music and all your songs are in iTunes Music not in different folders.
Copying the whole folder brings with it the iTunes Music folder and also the iTunes Library (iTunes Library.itl in Windows) database file which holds all the information about your songs (Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts, Last Played, Date Added, etc). You'll get more information including the Folder/File structure in this article: What are the iTunes library files?
On the PC you'll find the iTunes folder in: \Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Music\. When you copy the iTunes folder make sure you put it into the same location on the new computer. When you open iTunes on the second computer it will be the same as on the original one Songs, Playlists, Play Counts, Ratings etc. When I moved iTunes a while ago for my daughter I was also using the same version of iTunes, not sure how important that is but it's probably worth keeping them the same.

Lost iTunes Library after upgrading to iTunes 7.7 HELP PLEASE

I have two issues on hand : after upgrading to iTunes 7.7 I opened iTunes and all of my music was gone except for about 1,000+ songs (3.2 GB) when I originally had about 20GB worth of songs. How can I recover my full library into iTunes ?
Second issue: when importing new CDs into iTunes 7.7 it only plays a fraction of each song before moving on to another song, whereas iTunes shows that I have the full song imported.
I really appreciate someone's help here, and does the latest version of iTunes have a bug ??

Further to my last post, I find that the purchased songs have been retained in the iTunes Library of my Mac Book - is there any way iI can restore them to the iMac?

Help! Lost iTunes Library and all playlist

Last night I discovered that my entire iTunes Library was gone except for about 100 songs and that all my playlists and iPhone apps as well. I had no idea how it happened but when I examined it further I saw a new shared "limewire" playlist. I do not have limewire but I have not seen that shared folder at my house before. Apparently, after much freaking out, my roommate admitted to downloading it. He said that nothing was downloaded because it wasn't functioning after he installed it but still the damage was done.
I checked my music folder and it looks as though all my songs are still there. I backed up my library not to long ago too, thank goodness.
First thing I did was spotlight all the files with limewire in it and deleted them. However, and this concerns me greatly, and file "LimeWireOSX.dmg" in my documents folder can not be found, except for in spotlight, and so can't be deleted.
I then tried to import my library through iTunes which added about two hundred songs, far from the few thousand I had, as well as my podcast and iPhone apps.
This is where I am at now. I am scared that whatever else I thought of doing such as uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes could have terrible ramifications due to whatever limewire could have given my hard drive.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
JD
p.s. my roommate is on dishes duty for a month

The Limewire file may be in your "Downloads" folder.
Do you still have all your music, etc. in your iTunes folder within your music folder?
If you do, look as this: How to re-create your iTunes library, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451.
Think about creating a separate user account for your roommate (if still living).

Lost ITunes library in Windows XP Home Edition

Hi:
It took close to 10 hours reconverting all my music from an external hard drive to a new installation of ITunes on a new laptop so I can put the music on a new IPod. All the music got converted--my husband and I both saw it. Then I went to my husband's desktop and the music was not in his ITunes library--so I changed the folder to look in--still no luck. When I returned to my desktop, the music was gone!! Can someone please help me--I cannot see the music anywhere. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling ITunes with no luck. Don't know what the heck is going on

The faster way would be to just move the files from the 'My Pictures' folder into the 'My Music' folder. Then just do a 'FIle=>Add Folder'. No need to delete them. Too late now...
After you convert the files to an acceptable iTunes form, make sure you know where they are located on the PC.
Here's some general info on iTunes and its music organization:
iTunes operates as a database of information for your music files. The actual music files are stored on your PC, not within iTunes. iTunes keeps absolute references of the music file location and other information in its database file. This allows iTunes to use music files from any location on the PC: different directories/folders on the main HD, another internal drive, an external drive, or a network drive (or any combination of the above). Each song reference has a specific and hardcoded path so iTunes can find and play (or sync) it. Move the file, change the path, re-map the drive it is on, and iTunes will lose the file (giving you the '!' of a ‘Broken Link’). Lose, move or corrupt the ‘iTunes Music.itl’ file and your complete Library will ‘vanish’.
If you delete, corrupt, or otherwise lose your ‘iTunes Library.itl’ file, you will end up with a ‘blank’ Library within iTunes. Nine time out of ten, your underlying music files are still on the PC. They can be ‘re-Added’ via the File==>Add Folder/File menu command, but you will lose some of the music meta-data. Recovering your Library via backup copies of the iTunes database file, or from importing the XML file is always preferable.
The iTunes music information (meta-data) is stored in two places: the actual individual song files themselves, and the iTunes Library database file (‘iTunes Library.itl’). There is a corresponding XML file that is created by iTunes, but not directly used. See: What are the iTunes Library files?.
Song attributes stored directly in each music file are as follows: Artist, Album, Song Title, Year, Comments, Compilation tag, Lyrics, Genre , Grouping, Composer, BPM, Album Artwork, Bit Rate & Kind (Both not tags - inherent to the file itself).
Song attributes stored in the iTunes Library database file only are: Playlists, Ratings, Play Count, Last Played, Date Added, Date Modified, Equalizer, Volume Adjustment.
Changing (or designating) the 'iTunes Music folder' location in the Preferences does not instruct iTunes where to look for existing songs it currently knows about. It directs iTunes where to store any new songs it Imports, or 'Adds' and copies to its Library organization (if that attribute is selected). This is an important distinction.
See: About the Add to Library, Import, and Convert functions

Help please Lost iTunes library from my MacBook Including both itunes purchased songs and uploaded from CDs. everything is still on my iPad is there a way to transfers it please.

there is a list of the songs on my MacBook but the media files have disappeared, also from my back up.
Tried to down load from iTunes Match but no success.
Any help much appreciated

iTunes won't transfer or download a track if there is an entry in the library for it, even if that entry is no longer attached to a file.
See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
iTunes Store > Purchased > {Media} > Not on this computer may allow you to download all missing items.
tt2

Lost ITunes library with Lion freeze....

3rd freeze in a less than 15minutes. This time Itunes was open. When I restarted I got the message there was an ".itl" file created.
What I am supposed to do with that ? How do I rebuild the library and how do I avoid a repeat experience...:)

After trying a few things (as suggested by the Apple website) and going nowhere...I called Apple. It is free for the first 90 days that you have Lion on your computer. And since Lion had eaten my ITunes library, I qualified for the free help....
In the end, the solution was to go to ADD TO LIBRARY and chose the ITUNES folder. Everything came back. I'll have to redo the individual playlists, though. Oh. Well. Case closed.

Lost itunes library

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