My Computer Crashed Last night and now itunes is gone what do i do?

Question

Hi I have Windows XP on a HP Pavillion. I have itunes well had it until my computer crashed. Then all my music is gone. I had 30GB of music loaded and $5000 of music purchased from itunes. How do I get that back on my PC? Did I just lose $5000. All this music is stored on my ipod video 30GB model. So how do I get this back on my PC or did I just lose $5000.

Answer 1

The easiest way is to restore from your backups. You did make backups of that $5000 worth of purchased music, didn't you?
If you didn't, then it is possible to transfer your tracks from an iPod back to iTunes. It's been covered here a number of times already, but again:
First, you need to prevent automatic synchronzation with a blank copy of iTunes. While connecting the iPod to the computer, click "cancel" when iTunes presents the dialog box offering to synchronize to the iPod. Or hold down the Shift and Ctrl keys in Windows. This should stop the iPod from auto synching with iTunes and the iPod will appear in the source list. Wait until you are sure the iPod has mounted, and that it will not auto sync and then you can let the keys go. This may take between 3 and 25 seconds depending on your computer.
Then if you're using iTunes 7, you can then copy music that you purchased from the iTunes Store back to iTunes directly. Just use the Transfer Purchases From iPod command under the iTunes File menu.
If you're not using iTunes 7 or want to copy back other tracks, the easiest way will be to search VersionTracker for "iPod". You'll find a number of utilities that can transfer your tracks and your playlists from your iPod back to your PC.
It's also possible to do this manually, but the procedure is rather involved. If you're interested, though, see this thread:
MacMuse: Computer crashed
Hope this helps.