itunes - all my music has gone!

[ziphur]

Aargh- I've just sat down after work to sit and relax to a bit of itunes relaxation and my entire library has gone, including purchases! Recent purchases the lot

I've located my itunes music folder but importing each track again will be a nightmare plus there's loads of duplicates..is there any kind of system restore that I could use?? Also file vault..that pops up pretty regularly and seems to take forever to shutdown...what exactly is it doing and why??

Heeeelllllllllppp please!!!

 

[Sky Blue]

Boot off the install disk and back up from a previous Time Machine backup.

 

[killmoms]

Okay, couple things here: if you don't know what File Vault does, why did you turn it on? File Vault is never on by default.

Secondly, how did you lose the library? Did you delete the Library file? Do you have a backup somewhere that you can restore? If not, you can just drag the iTunes Music folder to iTunes and it will repopulate the database (no, it won't duplicate the files).

 

[ziphur]

I' ll do that- thanks folks..

Hmm, well I installed it because I thought i would protect my Macbook Pro and thought I had to..Was it not a good idea then??

 

[hob]

If you look in your iTunes folder, is there a file called iTunes Library? Are there several? (iTunes Library 1, or Copy of iTunes Library, something like that?)

Also, check your trash can...

Quit iTunes, and load it again holding the option (alt) key. When it loads, it will ask where this file is. Try out any iTunes Library file you can find! One of these will probably be your library!

(iTunes Library is an XML file that hold all of the information such as track location, ratings, things like that...)