Itunes can't find songs even though they haven't been moved

It sounds like you need to recreate your iTunes library. I had to do this once, here is the link to the tutorial:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.ht...

After you rebuild it you'll see iTunes finding new songs you never knew you had. I actually found 20 new songs that I have no clue where they came from...lol

Good Luck!

I will try that tonight and report the results. Do you know if this will retain playcount and ratings?

I have never really used the play count or the ratings. But just checking at mine everything was reset (I don't miss any settings, all I care is that my iTunes Lib. is working fine now). Mind you I am using a Mac so it could be different in a WinPC. There is some info on how to do a backup at the end of the document in case you want to do it.

Good Luck!

Okay, sorry it took me a while to find time to do this. It did not work. At least not the way I wanted it to.

I backed up all playlists using instructions here: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93763

I followed the directions to recreate the iTunes Library, and when I restored it, I got a message saying that not all of my music was restored because some could not be found. So basically, it just removed all the songs that it couldn't find originally (over 3 GB). So at that point, I assume that 100% of the songs were working, but it didn't fix anything.

What I might try next is what I dreaded: manually pointing the files to the correct location (which never changed since I have iTunes manage my music folder!). If I do, I'll post results. If it happens again, then I might have to check my HD health.

I just tried the rebuilding library solution and it didn't work either. In fact now it is showing my 80 gig music library to be 22 gigs! I will have to connect to the external drive and re-drag all the music back into itunes from scratch to fix this . . .

any suggestions write scott @ scooper5150@yahoo.com thanks!!

I fixed my problem (which may have similar elements as yours).
This is how I did it:
(I actually had two problems that came up at once. I had a corrupted XML file from shutting down while it was saving, and I added another external usb hard drive that remapped my music external harddrive from E:/ to F:/. I’ll deal with the drive issue first because that is probably what most people are running into.)
First, iTunes thought all my files were in E:/..... because that is where they were. I disconnected my music hdd, and plugged in another. When I plugged in my music hdd again, it assigned it F:/, so iTunes was looking in the wrong place. Simply finding one of the songs on the new drive letter didn’t update all of them. This can be fixed one of two ways. I’ll start with the simpler way.
1. You need to remap your music hdd back to what iTunes thinks is your hdd location. To do this, export your music list (you may have to try both .xml and .txt formats as my .txt didn’t show file locations, but my .xml did). Look at the file and look for either
XML: <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/E:/My%20Music/M...
TXT: Location E:/My%20Music/M...
You can see it thinks that the files are in E:/ so change the music hdd drive letter back to E:/ by right-clicking My Computer, select Manage->Storage->Disk Management, right-click the device or partition, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths. If you already have an E:/ or whatever you need to change to, you can remap it to another letter to free up the letter you need or follow the alternate way listed below.

2. You could do like I did and rename the music hdd, and change where iTunes thinks it is. I did it this way to avoid this problem happening in the future. I changed the drive letter of my music hdd to M:/ by right-clicking My Computer, select Manage->Storage->Disk Management, right-click the device or partition, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
I then exported my music list (copied a backup of it incase what I did next messed it up), and made sure that the file I exported had the locations in it (XML: <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/E:/My%20Music/M... or TXT: Location E:/My%20Music/M...). I then deleted all the songs in my iTunes library (in iTunes). I’m not sure if you have to do that step, but I didn’t want to take the chance of having duplicates.
Next, I went to the exported file, and did a find and replace.
Find what: //localhost/E:/My%20Music
Replace what: //localhost/M:/My%20Music
and let it run.
You have to be careful to use proper find and replace terms. If you just replaced E with M, you would change a lot of stuff you don’t want.
Next import songs in iTunes, and point it to your file where you replaced your characters.
This will unfortunately changes the Dated Added entries to today’s date.
If importing doesn’t work, you need to open the iTunes Library.itl file probably located C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\My Documents\My Music\iTunes with a txt editor, and delete everything and save. Then rename your xml file iTunes Music Library.xml and drop it into the same folder (overwriting the existing one). When you start up iTunes, it will repost your library “iTunes Library.itl” from the iTunes Music Library.xml file.

Now when I did this, I ran into my second problem, a corrupted xml file. It only uploaded a portion of my songs, and said there was an error. So I tried opeing the xml file with Word. It wouldn’t open, but it said where the error was. It said “an invalid character was found in text content, Error Location: line 233, Column 29” I opened the file in FrontPage to find the line and column, and one of my artists had a space in front, and it didn’t like that so I removed the space and it worked fine. Now you may have a better program for editing xml files, that is just what I used.

</string></string>

I just released a tool at sourceforge, which dummy-users can use, when iTunes "lost" their files. It is tested with iTunes 8.0.2. It searches all files in your music directory. But additionally, it also works, when you renamed your files, not just moved them (comparing file names and letting you choose out of the most propable).

"DOWNLOAD":http://itunesrepair.sourceforge.net/

(hope you do not regard this as spam).
cheers
Thomas

Yeah, I've actually have the exact same scenario but worse. I download and buy my songs from another account but same computer. Recently I've found that this has problems as i can't conveniently download songs onto my iPod. So, i created a whole different library on my account. But, after downloading the new songs, and i try playing them, a little exclamation mark pops up beside the song and says that the song could not be located. I try to look for it but none of the songs are under any files in my Win XP. This happens for all of my songs. Someone help cuz i just wasted a ton of money D:

I had similar problem and followed Kherovas advice on the hdd mapping. It had changed from G to F:. changed it back and now all tracks are where they should be. Thanks

So here's what I did...and it worked! - this is for if your music never moved, but iTunes suddently can't find it.
STEP1: Copied the existing library, genius, extras and .tmp files from the drive location that Itunes references them. I simply copied them and stored the copies off to a seperate temporary location on my drive away from the iTunes folder.
STEP2: Opened iTunes as normal. Selected library so I could see all of my songs. Select all (CTRL+A) > delete them FROM THE LIBRARY... DONT DELETE THEM FROM YOUR DRIVE WHEN IT ASKS...just delete them from the iTunes library.
STEP3: From the menu select "File" >"Add folder to library"....select the folder that you keep all of your music files. For most that let iTunes manage your content it will be under a folder named "iTunes".
This will add your content back, but it's screwing up your checked items, last played, favorites, etc...that's why you move on to step 4..
STEP4: Close iTunes.
STEP5: Copy that temporary files that you had saved off: the library, .tmp, extras, etc. and overlay them back in the place they belong. i.e. overwrite that new library you just created with your old one again.
STEP6: Open iTunes...you should see it say it is "analyzing" songs as it goes through your library and reestablishes connections with the songs it had previously forgotten the location of.
The connection to the music file is reestablished and you have all of your recently played, favorites, etc restored to before the issue.

NOTE: I let iTunes manage my music so I knew that the issue was just it going stupid and not that my content had moved. Additionally, my drive did not change. I happen to keep the library and content on an external, but the drive assignment (G: in my case) hadn't changed...

Now if I can just get my wife to remember to connect the external hard drive's usb to her laptop BEFORE she launches iTunes I wont have this issue...

hopefully helpful!! - Chris

I just deleted the iTunes library's music and added it again and it works now because iTunes knows where to find the music.

I have 71 gig of music.. Originally I have 37 gig and added the contents of my wifes Hard Drive. However upon copying I was asked to replace items already in my list and I clicked yes. After 30 mins of copying all was transfered. But It appeared that some had not move accross properly. There was an awful amount of 'Greatest Hits' albums. I opened this folder and inside there must have been 20 albums by different artists. Also to get all the new content from these new files to my Itunes playlist I had to open each individual album from A-Z and Drag over the contents to the screen list. This seemed to work. (After 3 hours). But recently my computer seems to be losing the location of the songs. Some I have managed to find and relocate for it but others i cannot. Now I must admit I deleted some from the screen playlist through frustration, this just seemed to impound on other music as well, losing its location. I tried searching but could not locate the files. Does anyone know where they are or have I destroyed them. ?.. Must be around 4 gig missing now. Although my Ipod Classic seems to sync and get the music on its files ok. My Itunes folder also seems to be split in two/three. One folders but when I press letters A-Z it will find 3 places for a list of A's and three places for a list ob B's etc, etc. Can anyone point me to the right path to follow. ? What should I do ?