Aug 29

Another day arguing with Itunes.

PC Services consolidate, itunes, library, machine, moving, new, vista, windows, xp

.
I had another session with Itunes. A client wanted to move the library from one machine to another in their home office. All of the usual fixes just didn’t work, so I will add below my chosen method on moving an iTunes library, on a PC.

(1)On the current iTunes machine, Go to “Edit>Preferences>Advanced>General”. You will see a path listed as “iTunes Music Folder Location” showing “My Documents etc.” I suggest you change this to “C:\iTunes_Music\”, Click OK and close the Properties view. This hasn’t changed anything yet, Now click on “Advanced>Consolidate Library.” This will now move all of the music to the new location you previously entered. This may take some time.

Once complete, copy that folder across to the new machine KEEPING the folder path identical to the one you used on the first machine at step(1).

Once complete, Browse to the “My Music/iTunes” folder and copy the the documents “iTunes Library.itl” and “iTunes Music Library.xml” plus the “Album Artwork” folders across to the new machine, storing these files in the appropriate “My Music/iTunes” folder.

Once the music is copied over, and you have copied the two files plus Album Artwork, you should start iTunes. Register with the iTunes Store and Authorise your computer. After doing all of this, close iTunes and re-open it. Everything should work just fine on the new machine.

Let me know how you get on please!