Windows 10 upgrade/Recover Playlist in iTunes

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Westerboy

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I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and all was fine for a day, then the next my computer wouldn't function. To recover I had to lose all my apps but kept my files. When I re-downloaded iTunes it found my music, but the playlists I worked on for three years were gone. I have BackBlaze backup and I re-dl-ed iTunes to get the XML Music file which is supposed to restore playlists by importing, but it didn't work. Do I have to delete all the files that came with my new iTunes dl? Starting from scratch is daunting to say the least, so any help would be appreciated. Cheers!
 

cjmnews

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Your backup needs to have a file usually name "iTunes Library.itl"
Restoring this file to the iTunes folder then opening iTunes should show you all your playlists and music.

As long as your music was restored to the same location as your original location, everything in iTunes should work now.
 

topcattim

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I have a similar difficulty since Windows 10. It also lost my playlists, so I imported them again by deleting the itunes Library.itl file and then reimporting using File>Library>Import Playlists and then uploading an itunes Music Library.xml file I had previously taken out of the Music>iTunes folder.
So, this has now restored my music, podcasts and playlists.

BUT

I no longer have the song ratings for each song, and the dates added are all wrong (they are from a couple of days ago when I reimported the music library). This means that none of the auto playlists are working properly.

Is there anything I can do to get back the original ratings and the original dates that the songs were added to the previous library? Flippin' Windows 10!
 

cjmnews

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You would need to have the original iTunes Library.itl file. That is where all your ratings, date added, playlists, skips and plays are stored.

If you had it, you should be able to delete your current iTunes Library.itl file from the iTunes folder and restore the old one to the iTunes folder, start iTunes and you would have everything back.

The XML import process you went through is a method used to rebuild a library if you lose your iTunes Library.itl file. As you can see it does not have all the data.

You may have a pseudo-recent backup of the iTunes Library.itl file in the iTunes\Previous iTunes Libraries folder. You'll see they have dates on them based on the date you upgraded iTunes. The newest one should be fairly close to the last good iTunes Library.itl file. You can copy the iTunes Library <date>.itl file to the iTunes directory, delete the iTunes Library.itl file, then rename the iTunes Library <date>.itl file to iTunes Library.itl and then start iTunes to see that version of your library.

Any changes you made since that date will need to be repeated.
So if you bought or imported music between that date and now, you will have to import it through the File->Add File to Library and locate the file in the iTunes\iTunes Media\<Artist>\<Album>\<song>.<ext> structure.
If you changed a playlist, you'll have to do it again.
If you rated a song, you'll have to do it again.

That might be better than starting over.

If there are people out there that want to avoid Windows 10, stay on Windows 7 for example, there is a simple utility called Never10 to block GWX, turn off the GWX popups and GWX will uninstall itself after using it.

I did a manual method to block GWX (took ownership of the GWX directory, emptied it, then set the permissions to DENY access to Trusted Installer, and System) and I decided to try this utility. I can see that one of the GWX tasks now no longer runs because of the registry setting the utility sets instead of the usual "system can not find the file specified" error (because I erased all the GWX files).
 

topcattim

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You would need to have the original iTunes Library.itl file. That is where all your ratings, date added, playlists, skips and plays are stored.

If you had it, you should be able to delete your current iTunes Library.itl file from the iTunes folder and restore the old one to the iTunes folder, start iTunes and you would have everything back.

The XML import process you went through is a method used to rebuild a library if you lose your iTunes Library.itl file. As you can see it does not have all the data.

You may have a pseudo-recent backup of the iTunes Library.itl file in the iTunes\Previous iTunes Libraries folder. You'll see they have dates on them based on the date you upgraded iTunes. The newest one should be fairly close to the last good iTunes Library.itl file. You can copy the iTunes Library <date>.itl file to the iTunes directory, delete the iTunes Library.itl file, then rename the iTunes Library <date>.itl file to iTunes Library.itl and then start iTunes to see that version of your library.

Any changes you made since that date will need to be repeated.
So if you bought or imported music between that date and now, you will have to import it through the File->Add File to Library and locate the file in the iTunes\iTunes Media\<Artist>\<Album>\<song>.<ext> structure.
If you changed a playlist, you'll have to do it again.
If you rated a song, you'll have to do it again.

That might be better than starting over.

If there are people out there that want to avoid Windows 10, stay on Windows 7 for example, there is a simple utility called Never10 to block GWX, turn off the GWX popups and GWX will uninstall itself after using it.

I did a manual method to block GWX (took ownership of the GWX directory, emptied it, then set the permissions to DENY access to Trusted Installer, and System) and I decided to try this utility. I can see that one of the GWX tasks now no longer runs because of the registry setting the utility sets instead of the usual "system can not find the file specified" error (because I erased all the GWX files).
Thanks for that, cjmnews, (and sorry westerboy, for jumping on your thread - I hope that the answers here will help you as well as me!)

I've followed cjmnews' advice, and have the songs and playlists back, but none of the songs have ratings, and the playlists, while they are back in name, are not back in terms of their logic rules (some subrules seem to have disappeared).

I have all of the songs, all rated, and all working playlists on an iPod. Is there any way that I can get iTunes to get the ratings and the working playlists back from the iPod? I don't want to just plug the iPod in and hope, in case somehow that gets messed up too!
 

cjmnews

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Ah, you must have upgraded iTunes after you imported your XML file. You may need to take an older version of the iTunes Library.itl file and try again.

Your other option to get your playlists is to buy CopyTrans. It can get the playlists off of the iPod and back into iTunes. Ratings I don't know if CopyTrans can do.

Plugging in the iPod for a sync will force you to erase it, unless you find an iTunes Library.itl that has your playlists in it. Then it will recognize the library as the same one the iPod originally synced with.
 

topcattim

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Ah, you must have upgraded iTunes after you imported your XML file. You may need to take an older version of the iTunes Library.itl file and try again.

Your other option to get your playlists is to buy CopyTrans. It can get the playlists off of the iPod and back into iTunes. Ratings I don't know if CopyTrans can do.

Plugging in the iPod for a sync will force you to erase it, unless you find an iTunes Library.itl that has your playlists in it. Then it will recognize the library as the same one the iPod originally synced with.
Thanks, but your that's just what is confusing me. I haven't upgraded iTunes at all. All that happened is that Windows updated itself from 8 to 10. Does that mean that there might still be a simple solution?
 

cjmnews

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iTunes should have continued to work as normal after the upgrade.

Obviously I can't prove that as I am blocking Windows 10 on all of my systems.

Yes there could be. If the Windows 10 moved/copied off the library file to another location then restoring it could fix this.

If you Search the entire hard drive for "iTunes Library.itl" do you find one that is NOT C:\Users\<login>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl?

If so, check the date, it should have a date on the file properties of the Windows upgrade or just before.

You can delete the iTunes Library.itl in the iTunes folder, then copy the one from the other location and put it there, open iTunes and everything should work.

I don't know why Windows 10 would move that file. They shouldn't be messing with your personal data locations.
 

cjmnews

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I just got my hands on a Windows 10 upgrade (from Windows 7) with iTunes 12.3 installed prior to the upgrade.

Everything was there. It was all normal. The iTunes Library.itl was intact and in place, as was all the music. So it is not the Windows 10 upgrade that is causing the issue.

Something else caused the problems above.
 

Westerboy

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Importing the itl file worked! Thanks so much and no worries about hijacking the topic, it was relevant. Big sigh of relief.
 

topcattim

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Importing the itl file worked! Thanks so much and no worries about hijacking the topic, it was relevant. Big sigh of relief.
Glad it worked for you, Westerboy. I'm getting closer, and just about to post separately.
 

topcattim

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I just got my hands on a Windows 10 upgrade (from Windows 7) with iTunes 12.3 installed prior to the upgrade.

Everything was there. It was all normal. The iTunes Library.itl was intact and in place, as was all the music. So it is not the Windows 10 upgrade that is causing the issue.

Something else caused the problems above.
Thanks cjmnews. I went quiet on this over the weekend while I tried to sort this out. I followed your previous post, and searched for an .itl file elsewhere. When I first got this computer about 3 years ago, it did something odd with partitioning, so that the main files are on a C partition but there wasn't enough space for everything there, so all the documents etc (including iTunes) are in a D partition. I found a shadow of iTunes on the C partition, with an old itl file that I imported and it mainly sorted things out, but (despite setting the preferences for the iTunes media folder location to the D\iTunes\iTunes Music) I've had to manually point about 500 songs to the correct location.

I also had a whole load of duplicate files that I then had to delete from both iTunes and the original location. Breathed a sigh of relief and carried on.

Today I find that a lot of the previous files are back. I'm keeping on working on this and hope that I can come back soon with a clear understanding of what the problem is, so that I can ask for your help again. Thanks for everything so far!
 

cjmnews

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I would have expected the ITL file on C. Unless you do the trick to map windows folders to other drives (I did this, my documents and stuff are on my 1 TB E drive, not on my SSD C drive).

Previous files are back how?

Are these deleted files that returned?
Are these duplicates that show up again?

Are you sure you are not opening a different copy of the iTunes Library from C?
Did you look on C to see if there was an iTunes folder there?

If you are having files reappear after a delete, then either your iTunes Library.itl file is not being saved when you exit iTunes (permissions issues, read only, full disk) or you are using possibly more than 1 ITL file some how.

The default location is C:\Users\<login>\Music\iTunes
 

topcattim

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I would have expected the ITL file on C. Unless you do the trick to map windows folders to other drives (I did this, my documents and stuff are on my 1 TB E drive, not on my SSD C drive).

Previous files are back how?

Are these deleted files that returned?
Are these duplicates that show up again?

Are you sure you are not opening a different copy of the iTunes Library from C?
Did you look on C to see if there was an iTunes folder there?

If you are having files reappear after a delete, then either your iTunes Library.itl file is not being saved when you exit iTunes (permissions issues, read only, full disk) or you are using possibly more than 1 ITL file some how.

The default location is C:\Users\<login>\Music\iTunes
Yes, that is all making sense. iTunes is running off the C drive ITL, although it has made a shadow on the D partition (but it is not updating this as regularly as the C partition). All began working again when I imported the C drive ITL file rather than the older one on the D drive.

When ITunes came back, it had tried to use the D drive ITL (I think), and this meant that the files weren't properly stored and organised. So I imported them manually, but the computer ran out of memory in the process, so some files didn't get imported properly (it knows they exist, but they have ! marks beside them and need to be pointed at the correct location) and anyway, none of those files had meta data in terms of star ratings, previously played etc.

All the meta data (for successfully imported files) was married up again when I imported the C drive ITL file.

I'm now near the end of the process of pointing iTunes at the correct files on the D partition for the files that it didn't import. Sadly, those ones have lost metadata and often album art too but that can be sorted as I go along. Its messed up a lot of my auto playlists (that were based on date added), but that's the price I pay.

I've now moved the music files from the C partition (there were duplicates from the D partition) and iTunes is still working fine, proving that it is not looking in C anymore, apart from to place the xml and itl file.

So, all is nearly back to normal. thanks so much for your help, and I've learned a bit about iTunes in the process!
 

James3333

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Itunes Fix

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and when I started itunes, I noticed all of my playlists were gone. I went to my Music/Itunes folder and noticed that there was indeed an itunes.itl file that was about 5.5mb. I knew that had to be my itunes librarry. I quit itunes, held down shift and restarted itunes. I then selected open library and selected the .itl file from my music/itunes folder. Voila!!! My itunes was back. From what I can ascertain, itunes created a new library after the windows 10 update under C: Anyways, its fixed!
 
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