[iTunes] I hate iTunes 8

[Jeff Carruthers]

On Jan 8, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Becca wrote:

>
>
> --- On Thu, 1/8/09, Kirk McElhearn <kirkmc at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> IT sounds like your real problem is your Internet access...
>
> that's not something I can do anything about - it's the perils of  
> living out in the country.
>
> but that's still no excuse for iTunes for freezing up on me and then  
> losing all my playlists - I don't see how that's a problem with my  
> internet access. I've been on the phone with AppleCare for about an  
> hour, and I know I'll have to uninstall everything and reinstall  
> it... and probably have to re-subscribe to all my podcasts... what I  
> don't know is whether I'll also have to rebuild my playlists or  
> whether iTunes will automatically find that library folder that  
> contains that information - and the guy from AppleCare that I talked  
> with didn't seem to know.
>
> *sigh*
>
> I didn't have these problems with iTunes 7.
>
> -becca

Becca: couple of thoughts.

I share your pain on the satellite internet situation. We suffered  
through the same problem -- only being able to download podcasts  
overnight due to the bandwidth limitations during the day. Since I am  
a night owl, I would start the downloads before I went to bed (after  
midnight) and make sure things were working properly. Even then, I'd  
often awake to discover that some of the downloads had failed due to  
timeouts on the satellite internet service. I have since found an  
alternative to satellite, in large part because of the iTunes podcast  
download problems with satellite.

Not sure how files are organized on the Windows side, but on the Mac  
there is a folder called Music for each user. Inside that folder,  
there is another folder called iTunes that contains all of your iTunes  
settings (including playlists) and all of your music and podcasts. You  
might find such a folder under mydocuments. If so, see whether the  
music and podcasts are still there and, if so, duplicate it in a  
folder with a new name (perhaps music2). With any luck, you should be  
able to point your newly-installed iTunes to this folder and not have  
to reload everything.

As for reinstalling iTunes, I'd go to the Apple.com site and download  
(overnight) the iTunes program and then do the reinstall. With luck,  
there won't be any problems with the download. Once you get it going  
again, see if it picks up the old iTunes music. If not, then go to the  
Preferences for iTunes, then the Advanced tab and change the location  
of the iTunes music folder to your duplicated folder in Music2. You  
may need to select and drag all of the music in the iTunes music  
folder to the main iTunes window, to re-establish the proper links.

Hope everything gets back to "normal".

Cheers

Jeff

-----------------------------------------------
Carruthers Communications                  Tel: 613-278-0390
678 2nd Concession N Sherbrooke     Cell: 613-720-2350
R.R. 1, McDonalds Corners, ON  K0G 1M0   Fax: 613-278-2929
www.carruthers.com                          e-mail: jeff at carruthers.com

"There's no such thing as a dumb question." (Anon)