Lost 90% of my i Tunes

[gomango]

I seem to have done something disasterously wrong with my iTunes.

When I try to play most of of my individual tracks, either in a playlist or from the library, instead of the speaker icon appearing at the selected tune and starting to play, an icon that looks like an exclamation mark ( ! ) appears at the left hand side. A drop down message also appears saying, "The song -name- could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" On clicking "Yes" I am presented with a selection of programmes, non of which seems to solve the problem.

As iTunes is one of the main reasons why I bought my MacBook Pro, this for me is a major disaster. The selection of tunes I cannot play is about 90% of those in the music library and 100% in most of my individual playlists.

Any assistance in resolving my problem will be greatly appreciated.

I have just done a check on the dates of the music that i have lost in the library and it would appear that all tunes downloaded after 14/07/08 are ok and all those prior to 17/01 have ben lost. Everything was OK yesterday but has all gone awry today.

 

[Doctor X]

I suppose asking if you backed everything up is not the response you want?

Sometimes you can corrupt or lose the original music file. iTunes is like a collection of "aliases" to the music on your hard drive.

So . . . have you searched the libraries where you have the original music for the lost songs?

--J.D.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

A drop down message also appears saying, "The song -name- could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" On clicking "Yes" I am presented with a selection of programmes, non of which seems to solve the problem.

On clicking, "Yes," you are presented with a Finder navigation box that allows you to navigate your hard drive to locate the music files (typically in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music).

Have you tried using that navigation box to navigate to your iTunes music folder, and select the music file that it's asking you to locate?