[joestros]

I have searched this forum as well as the Internet for help on this topic but nothing seems to be helping my specific issue. I sure hope someone here can help. I apolgize for the long post, but I want to provide as much detail as possible in hopes someone has some advice. Specs: Windows Vista 64-bit, iTunes 10.2.2.14 64 bit, 15,000+ music files. I have been using iTunes since it's inception.

We store all of our iTunes media files on a hard drive hooked to our wireless router. Besides slight slugishness over the wifi, things have been working well for over 1 year. Recently we began noticing very slugish performance (seemed to coincide with recent iTunes updates, but, might just be a coincidence). After experiencing several iTunes crashes I decided it was time to start fresh and reinstall iTunes. I removed it along with all iTunes media libraries. I renamed the old folder that contains the media and library files and moved it to the desktop just in case. Other than song ratings, I really didn't mind losing playlists. To be clear, the actual media files (music files, etc) are still intact located on the external hard drive.

I removed iTunes, download version 10.2.2.14 64-bit, and reinstalled. Now,when I load up iTunes, it creates a new iTunes media folder, and all media needs to be reloaded. This is exactly what I wanted, and blank slate! But, this is where things start going wrong. When I load a song into iTunes by using the "add file" and/or "add folder" (I want to manually add in this manner) they load fine, and play fine, but, when I close iTunes and reload, I get the dreaded "not valid/damaged iTunes library" message. iTunes then creates a new library upon loading. Even if I reload the songs (or different songs), shut down, and reload, THAT library is now damaged and the whole process is repeated. I have tried creating the media folder on the network drive, and on the local drive. I have unistalled and reinstalled iTunes at least five times. I have tried manually pointing iTunes to a new library by holding down "shift" when loading. I have performed a full system scan with McAfee and no virues were found. Because of the crashes and slugishness we were experiencing before this I want iTunes to forget all of our old library info and start fresh.

I am at my wits end. I thought I understood iTunes fairly well but this issue has me stumped. I just don't get why the libraries are becoming damaged. I have all of our files so how would you just start over with iTunes?

Thanks for any help.

-Joe