Is Itunes deleting my music? And why won't it load?

December 25, 2007 7:35 AM

Is Itunes deleting selected MP3s for no reason?

I have a pretty large (85 gigs or so) mp3 collection that I manage with itunes. Totally randomly, I find myself losing certain tracks from certain albums. It won't be the whole album, just a few tracks. Often the first but not necessarily, and then some others.

Oftentimes they are albums that I like quite a bit. It might be a red herring but sometimes they are tracks that I have copied into other locations, but not always.

I consolidate my libary into one location.

It's really annoying and frustrating.

While I'm at it, I just got a notice to update Itunes, which I did, and now it won't start. I get the hourglass, and then it turns off and no Itunes. When I go to turn off my computer, I get "Itunes not responding". I've tried to unistall and reinstall several times and I'm getting nowhere.

This has also happened to me in the past.

Any thoughts?

posted by sully75 to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

Define "losing". Are the enties gone from iTunes, or is iTunes telling you it can't find the song file?
posted by secret about box at 7:43 AM on December 25, 2007

Response by poster: Gone entirely.

Not in the folder in my itunes music file at all.
posted by sully75 at 8:11 AM on December 25, 2007

Windows or Mac? This may not be an iTunes issue; it might be a file system corruption issue.
posted by nathan_teske at 8:21 AM on December 25, 2007

Response by poster: Windows XP.

I've now uninstalled my itunes and quicktime install, deleted the files from my programs folder, quit the running programs in the task manager and reloaded an older version of itunes. I still can't get it to start.

(that's besides the persistent problem of tracks disappearing)

Thanks
Sully
posted by sully75 at 8:52 AM on December 25, 2007

Do you store your library on an external drive?
posted by sourwookie at 8:59 AM on December 25, 2007

My father has this problem with a similar large collection on a local drive (XP Pro), and we have not been able to find the reason nor any solution.
posted by Meagan at 9:17 AM on December 25, 2007

Sully, when in your timeline did you reboot? Sometimes after doing an update a program might get a little wedged. IIRC I've had itunes not work after an update but when the update finishes up on a reboot it works again. Generally I ignore/blow away any wedged programs on reboot. Not always a good idea, but what are you really going to do?
posted by Wood at 10:13 AM on December 25, 2007

I don't have a specific answer for you, but the way iTunes works is really screwy. Particularly on Windows XP. I'm not surprised to hear it is deleting your music for you.
posted by Nelson at 10:19 AM on December 25, 2007

Frankly, I'd doubt it was iTunes doing the deleting. It's really not in its DNA to just automatically delete anything without being prompted to do so by the user. I'd seriously look into something on the system level, as nathan_teske suggests.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:23 AM on December 25, 2007

Could it be that the songs are being accidentally deleted from the library when someone is trying to remove them from a playlist?

There is supposedly a virus that randomly deletes mp3 files.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 12:07 PM on December 25, 2007

I have had this same problem... apparently my itunes dislikes Pete Doherty's antics too. Lost both libertines records.
posted by Large Marge at 1:42 PM on December 25, 2007

There is supposedly a virus that randomly deletes mp3 files.
That would be W32 or Nopir-B. They're pretty old. I would think most anti-virus software would catch them before they can do any harm. Still, it wouldn't hurt to run a scan.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:40 PM on December 25, 2007

I've had this problem too. At first I thought I was being careless with moving files and creating playlists, but random tracks within certain albums are missing. Usually my favorites too.

I'm using XP, keep my 80Gb-ish collection on a separate HD. Used to have iTunes "keep my music folder organized", which I think was part of the problem.
posted by QueSeraSera at 6:26 PM on December 25, 2007

Response by poster: For the record, I keep all my music on a seperate hard drive, but in my computer (it's a desktop).

I've noticed this problem with two different computers and all variants of hard drives. (On a laptop C drive, on an external hard drive with a laptop, and now in my new desktop).

I still can't get itunes to load. Very frustrating. I guess I'll try to reboot a few more times. I found this, and there are many threads like it to suggest that this is a somewhat common problem with no solution at the moment. What was in the thread below hasn't helped.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1271224&tstart=120

Thanks for the comments. My gut feeling is that it's something screwed up with Itunes.
posted by sully75 at 9:06 PM on December 25, 2007

Response by poster: Wood, what does it mean when a program is "wedged"? Itunes installs, it just won't load.

I restarted my computer a couple of times to see if that would help but no dice. Can you be a little more specific about what kind of thing you are doing to get something unwedged? Thanks!
posted by sully75 at 9:28 PM on December 25, 2007

Do you have iTunes set to give you a prompt when you intentionally try to delete a track? Maybe you don't and you're accidentally deleting the songs in question by hitting Delete when they're highlighted?
posted by Burns Ave. at 10:02 PM on December 25, 2007

Response by poster: Burns Ave.

I have it set to give me a prompt.
posted by sully75 at 5:11 AM on December 26, 2007

Response by poster: If anyone is interested I've had a discussion about this on the apple boards.
posted by sully75 at 3:24 AM on December 27, 2007