ipod touch/itunes n00b needs help recovering from a big PC crash...

December 22, 2012 2:43 PM

ipod touch/itunes n00b needs help recovering from a big PC crash...

Hi everyone,
I have an earlier generation ipod touch. I had itunes installed on my PC, with an itunes account.

That was some time ago. Since then I went through a catastrophic PC failure and the PC was replaced.

I haven't touched the ipod in a while but I'd like to start using it again and downloading content from itunes. The problem is, how do I recover my itunes account?

I'm guessing my first step is to re-download itunes. Then what? Just make a new account, or will the new itunes detect from the ipod what my old account was?

thanks for the help.

posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey to technology (2 answers total)

to recover your purchases you need to use your old account, and I don't think iTunes will detect that from the iPod.

if you don't remember the account name you can find out from the iPod though - on a current device it's Settings > iCloud, so something like that should show the account name you used.
posted by russm at 3:15 PM on December 22, 2012

If you bought any old music through the iTunes Store, try opening it. If it hasn't been updated within a couple years, you might get asked to put in your account password (the username will be entered) as Apple once put DRM on their music a long time ago. They haven't done this for years, though, so it might be one of those you-get-lucky things where it is a really old track. Once you have your username, it should just be a matter of resetting the password, which you can do through iTunes.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:33 PM on December 22, 2012