Restoring Old Library

Hi,
I've been reading around the forum on this issue and tried most of the fixes but without success - so apologies if this is duplicating.
I had to reset my laptop to factory settings. I want to restore my old itunes libary with playlists/purchases/devices being recognised so that i don't have to start again.
Prior to doing the system restore on my laptop I backed up my itunes media by copying the entire Music folder in my library which held the itunesMedia folder to an external hard disk.
I copied these backed up files to the Music libary on my laptop after it had been reset. I then downloaded and installed new itunes and have held down shift to choose libary when opening itunes and pointed it to the old itl file but itunes just opens without any data and creates a new itl file each time.
Has anyone any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks

I was refering to the permissions on the iTunes library files and the media folder, not the software installation folders. Since you've copied in this data from another system there is a possibility that they are incorrect. Depending on the backup method it is also possible that read-only flags were set. If iTunes cannot have full unfettered access to the .itl file then it may revert to the default path and a fresh library.
Alternatively, are you sure you're using the correct hold-down-shift-as-you-start-iTunes-and-keep-holding-until-prompted method to choose a different library. See also Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash. It is just possible that something went wrong as the library was opened up on the new machine for the first time.
tt2

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