Help me find my iTunes music on my PC

[Jeffwo]

Since I reinstalled XP Pro on my pc I can't seem to find my iTunes songs.

When I to to \My Documents\My Music\iTunes there's

\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library.xml
but it's in gibberish ...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE plist (View Source for full doctype...)>
- <plist version="1.0">
- <dict>
<key>Major Version</key>


and there's \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Library which opens the iTunes sync box showing my phone.

What am I missing?

Thanks


.

 

[ViRGE]

To be clear, is your music showing up in iTunes? Otherwise what the library says has no significance, since there isn't any music in it.

Anyhow, when you say you reinstalled XP, how exactly did you go about it? Normally you'd wipe the drive first, which would result in the loss of your music...

 

[Jeffwo]

Yeah, I wiped the drive clean. Then I reinstalled XP, reinstalled iTunes and synced my phone. My music is still showing up on the iTunes sync box thingy but I can't find the file on my computer where the songs are stored.(even when I search the song titles on my computer, they don't show up)

I suspect it is in the file \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library but it is all showing up in xml which I don't comprehend.

 

[nickbits]

Lol gibberish
Hold shift and open iTunes and it should ask you to create or open a library. Point it to the XML gibberish file and see if that does the trick.

 

[ViRGE]

Yeah, I wiped the drive clean. Then I reinstalled XP, reinstalled iTunes and synced my phone. My music is still showing up on the iTunes sync box thingy but I can't find the file on my computer where the songs are stored.(even when I search the song titles on my computer, they don't show up)

I suspect it is in the file \My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music Library but it is all showing up in xml which I don't comprehend.

I'm a bit lost here since I don't know quite what you mean by "iTunes sync thingy". Are you talking about Apple's cloud service (iTunes Match), or are you syncing an iOS device? If it's the latter, you can't transfer music from an iOS device to the computer, so that may be what you're seeing. Otherwise unless you've run iTunes Match and downloaded the songs, they wouldn't be on your local computer.

This might be one of those cases where a screenshot would be useful.

 

[Jeffwo]

I'm a bit lost here since I don't know quite what you mean by "iTunes sync thingy". Are you talking about Apple's cloud service (iTunes Match), or are you syncing an iOS device? If it's the latter, you can't transfer music from an iOS device to the computer, so that may be what you're seeing. Otherwise unless you've run iTunes Match and downloaded the songs, they wouldn't be on your local computer.

This might be one of those cases where a screenshot would be useful.

Oh, it is possible to transfer music from computer to iPhone 3Gs. I've done it for years. You set up the iTunes library folder then you move mp3s into that folder and they go onto your iTunes and show on the phone in iPod after you sync.

I don't know what I've done wrong here to not be able to find my songs on my computer. Maybe an iPhone aficionado will notice this and be able to help me out.

Thanks Virge for your help.

.

 

[splat_ed]

Just to be clear... You wiped the PC completely. There will be NO music on your PC.

You still have it on your iPhone though.

BUT (and this is what Virge said)...

You CAN sync music FROM PC to iPhone.
You CANNOT sync music FROM iPhone to PC. (but see iTunes Match service)

It sounds like you're trying the latter. The iTunes Match service does let you pull your songs from the cloud (but not actually from the iPhone)

You do have one option though. There are ways to manually copy music from iDevices to the PC but I'm not sure of those myself.

When you re-synced your phone, I suspect it just created a brand new list on your PC for iTunes to manage... Hence the "gibberish"

 

[TheStu]

If you open iTunes the program, are your songs there? If so, right click on one and select 'Show in Explorer'. There's your music.

Unless all the songs have a little cloud icon next to them, in that case you have no music on your computer.

 

[MotionMan]

This might be one of those cases where a screenshot would be useful.

Not just useful, but, I believe, mandatory.

OP is making less sense than I usually do with my Apple problems!

MotionMan

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Just to be clear... You wiped the PC completely. There will be NO music on your PC.

You still have it on your iPhone though.

BUT (and this is what Virge said)...

You CAN sync music FROM PC to iPhone.
You CANNOT sync music FROM iPhone to PC. (but see iTunes Match service)

It sounds like you're trying the latter. The iTunes Match service does let you pull your songs from the cloud (but not actually from the iPhone)

You do have one option though. There are ways to manually copy music from iDevices to the PC but I'm not sure of those myself.

When you re-synced your phone, I suspect it just created a brand new list on your PC for iTunes to manage... Hence the "gibberish"

this.

 

[MotionMan]

Did this ever get resolved?

MotionMan