Itunes mess

[withm]

Ack! Itunes has eaten tracks 1-7 on over 100 albums. They show up in the listings, but I get an error message that the the song could not be used because the original file could not be found. What's up with that? Setting a restore point did nothing to ressurect. Most of these are cds I own so I can reload, but sheesh - that is a huge job. Bleah!

[Owlie]

Did you reorganize or rename your music files? Update iTunes recently?

[withm]

Did you reorganize or rename your music files? Update iTunes recently?

I haven't deleted tracks 1-7 of every album, nor would I have a clue to do this on a global basis. Tracks 8 - xx seem to be fine. Everything apperars intact on the Ipod itself, but this does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling about syncing anytime soon.

Itunes upgraded itself a couple weeks ago but I haven'tre-named anything, nor moved anything, nor added anything other than podcasts in months.

I'm trying to migrate everything to a new computer. So far email, contact lists, bookmarks have all transferred easily, but Itunes seems to be corrupted.

Probably 90% of the missing tracks are from CDs in my possession (but scattered all over the house, office, and car). But most of my operas had been library borrows, and of course have been returned.

I posted on the Itunes support board but from the responses I've seen there to other and/or similar problems, I don't have much expectation of solving this problem there.

[Irulan]

I get great solutions by googling these problems and reading various solutions in the apple/iTunes help forums and other tech forums.

[withm]

I get great solutions by googling these problems and reading various solutions in the apple/iTunes help forums and other tech forums.

Yeah I've been doing that for the last 4 hours. Giving up for now and going to bed. I re-downloaded what had been purchased from Itunes, but it's all my own music that remains to be either reloaded, or fixed.

[OakLeaf]

Did you sign up for iTunes Match? (I'm not touching that thing!!!)

If so, I was just reading something that might solve your issue - I don't remember it off the top of your head, but if you are signed up for Match I could find it easily.

[withm]

Did you sign up for iTunes Match? (I'm not touching that thing!!!)

If so, I was just reading something that might solve your issue - I don't remember it off the top of your head, but if you are signed up for Match I could find it easily.

No, I'm not on Match, whatever that is. What is that? What does it do?

I found a lot of stuff on various forums that reference the problem, but have not found anything that actually solved the problem. It's odd, because it's only the first 7 tracks of each album. If it were the whole album, or if I'd been messing with the listings I'd understand. But I don't even know how to make playlists - I only listen to whole albums at a time.

[OakLeaf]

Well, if you're not on Match, then the thing I read wouldn't apply to you anyway.

What it does, is put your music into the cloud so you can listen to it from any copy of iTunes that's online, rather than having to store your library on authorized devices. So anything that's for sale in the iTunes store (whether or not you bought it there) gets a tag that you own it; if you have music that they don't sell, it uploads a copy (which I'm told can take for-freakin'-ever if you have a lot of music).

I'm not bothering with it, myself.

[withm]

Well, if you're not on Match, then the thing I read wouldn't apply to you anyway.

What it does, is put your music into the cloud so you can listen to it from any copy of iTunes that's online, rather than having to store your library on authorized devices. So anything that's for sale in the iTunes store (whether or not you bought it there) gets a tag that you own it; if you have music that they don't sell, it uploads a copy (which I'm told can take for-freakin'-ever if you have a lot of music).

I'm not bothering with it, myself.

Ok, now I remember reading about that. I already re-loaded the stuff I purchased directly from Itunes. (Yes, even those tracks were missing). But since the Ipod itself is sort of a back up, and since I actually have the cds, I did not opt for the Match.

[susan.wells]

I have had similar situations when I have 1) changed computers and 2) changed OS from Windows to Apple. My tracks were not deleted I just had to locate them by browsing to their stored location. I keep all of my iTunes on an external hard drive (which I back up to another external hard drive) to alleviate situation 1. I have found for situation 2 the Windows OS could not handle special characters that the Apple OS has no issues with. Windows therefore changed the file name to something with an "_" which is not how the file is recognized in the Apple OS (e.g., if the song name has an !, :, (, ) ...). Once I've browsed to the file to re-establish the link, I've had no further issues. I hope this helps. I haven't found an easier solution to date and it is a real PIA if you have many albums to restore.