01-02-2010, 10:33 PM

So I started up my computer today, nothing out of the ordinary, opened iTunes, have a screen telling me how to "get started" to add stuff to my library. All my music is gone from my library, my playlists, movies, etc. I regularly consolidate my music so it's not like it's gone forever, but it seems like my playlists are? Is there something I can do to get everything back without importing all of my consolidated music again? I'm on XP, btw.

01-03-2010, 01:22 AM

XP saves restore points for reverting your system to an earlier configuration. I don't know if that would include the iTunes Library or not, but it's worth looking into. Other than that, I would suggest a backup, but if you had one you wouldn't be asking us for help, eh? Why are you running iTunes in XP? You are now experiencing exactly the kind of trouble that most often can be avoided by using Mac's OS X operation system. IMHO XP should only be used to play games and run other programs that cannot be found for Mac.

01-03-2010, 08:02 AM

I'm pretty sure it you just backed up your itunes folder (or just your Music folder) your playlist would be included in that (if that is what you meant by consolidate).

If thats the case you should just be able to import everything back into its proper place and feel the victory of having backed up.

If that doesn't recreate your playlist let us know.

01-03-2010, 03:43 PM

no, it didn't bring my playlists back. It's like iTunes just cleared all my preferences, everythings back to default.

And now I can't listen to my music by most recently added since it's all being added today

01-04-2010, 11:10 PM

anybody?

01-05-2010, 09:39 AM

You mean you cannot find anything to import in the folder Music>itunes? This cant happen, this folder is never deleted even if you delete itunes.

01-05-2010, 11:18 AM

All your playlists are stored in the iTuneslibrary.lib file found at 'My Music > iTunes'.

Recover that file from a backup and you'll be golden.

No idea why iTunes took a turn like that though, seems very odd...

01-09-2010, 06:35 PM

I used this method to try and restore:

How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists

However, when I chose the iTunesMusicLibrary.xml, it just imports a blank library again and duplicates all of the generic playlists iTunes comes with...