Shift iTunes and lost my library

I ran out of space on my pc Sunday morning from downloading cd's in my itunes - I HAD over 48,000 songs in my library along with 50 or so playlists.
I followed a post from turningtest2 about "shift when opening itunes" hit the wrong option, wiping out my itunes library. Is there a way to get it back???
Also, I have a 1 tb external hard drive, can anyone please tell me how to tranfer my lost library to the external and how to free up space on my hard drives so that I can download more music -
Please Help Me

I'm still not sure why shift-starting iTunes and connecting to C:\Users\<User>\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl won't work to restore your library. I've a feeling something has been overlooked.
That said, if you just want to start over then I would suggest you create a new library at X:\iTunes where X: is the drive letter for your external drive. If you have already created your new library there then there is no need to do it again. Make sure under Edit > Preferences > Advanced that the media folder shows up as X:\iTunes\iTunes Media
Close iTunes.
Move, that is cut & then paste, the media from your C: drive into X:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes. Moving the files this way will free up space on the C: drive.
When you have moved everything over start iTunes to have it add everything to the library and rearrange it inside the media folders. When it has finished adding everything close and reopen. Take a look inside X:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes - anything it didn't manage to add to the library will be in a Not Added folder in there. You can decide what to keep or throw away.
tt2

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Are you now using a different username from the one you used prior to migrating? If so that is the reason for the problem. You might, then, give this a try:
To fix Home folder permissions
Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. At the command line prompt enter or paste the following command line:
sudo chown -R `id -un`:`id -gn` ~
Press RETURN. You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed.

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Se my response on this post:
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They do not appearon the right-had side of your post.

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My itunes recently lost its library for no apparent reason. The only library backup is an old one that does not reflect my current iPhone, and I do not want to have to re-input all the lyrics for the music I have imported in that time. Does itunes not automatically create a backup of its libraries? Is there anyway to copy this information off the iPhone?
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tt2

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I am afraid troubleshooting this is difficult if it is intermittent. That is why I suggested making copies of iTunes library.itl and iTunes Library.xml then you can restore these copies if the lirbary disappears. Then you only lose data since you copied them.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414
Restore from Backup
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766

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If you're using 11.0.x, click on the wee boxy icon up in the top-left corner of your iTunes to see the "Show Menu Bar" control, as per the following screenshot:
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Try resetting your home screen layout, go to your setting>general>reset home screen layout.

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iTunes 11 for Windows: Set up syncing for iPod, iPhone, or iPad
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph12313
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it said this after i did that..

ITunes and entire music library lost in compute crash... help needed please

Evening everyone.
I lost my iTunes and complete library in computer crash, but music is still on my 4G iPod touch.
Can I use this to copy my music library back to my PC?
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Anna Marie

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I think I could solve my problem:
The CalibratedSoftware application CalibratedMXFOptions seemed to be switched back to the Demo license (it's not clear why?), which terminated the duration of the imported files to 30 seconds. Re-activating the proper license and using the QuickRefresh for FCP application updated these files and made FCP recognizing the proper duration of the MXF an MP4 files.
That was not enough. I opened a new project, saved it and opened parallel the 'damaged' project.
That was all!
Thanks
Anton

Shift iTunes and lost my library

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