# ITunes deleting music files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



## Adrianovic (Nov 21, 2008)

My ITunes is constantly deleting or moving my music files to an unknown location ! Exclamation marks appear next to my down-loaded songs and they become un-playable and don't transfer to my IPod! What can I do, it's like a virus!


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## Tiki.11 (Nov 19, 2008)

this is because you are moving the location of your music files. Delete all the ones in your itunes. and then copy from the source where all your music files are, paste it into itunes. DO NOT MOVE THE MUSIC FILES FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE or iTunes cannot locate them.


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## Adrianovic (Nov 21, 2008)

Thanks 4 replying, I am not consciously moving my music files! If ITunes or my computer is sending the files some where else how would I find out where the files are going so that I may copy them and re-apply them to my ITunes?


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## parasolution (Sep 23, 2006)

Are you using any other music programs, like Windows Media Player?

Sometimes when you use more than one program to play music, the other program will scan through the library and start sorting it and moving songs. I had this happen before, one program would move files based on its sort, then the other program didn't know where to look for it. For example, in my iTunes, any compilations are sorted by artist, not the album, thus the song is located in the respective artist's folder. But when Windows Media sorted through the library, it sorted my compilations via album not artist. It thus moved the songs to a "various artists" folder. Then when I went to iTunes all my compilations were missing, they were physically still on the hard drive, but moved to a different location.


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## Adrianovic (Nov 21, 2008)

Were you able to find your missing music files? If so, how did you do this?


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## SG2 (Nov 24, 2008)

To the OP:-

My brother told me the other day that his CCLEANER software had wiped out all his Itunes content but had left empty entries much similar to your situation.
Do you use Ccleaner for your OS file cleanups or a similar software App?


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## parasolution (Sep 23, 2006)

Adrianovic said:


> Were you able to find your missing music files? If so, how did you do this?


Did you use another program? I assume you did, as I've never heard of iTunes deleting songs. Easiest way is to use the search function on your OS, as it will scan through all the folders on your PC. But most likely, the music got moved to a various artist or unknown artist folder in your music folder. If the songs aren't tagged correctly, they can get moved to those types of folders.

But yes, I did find my music.


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## Hughv (Jul 22, 2006)

parasolution said:


> Are you using any other music programs, like Windows Media Player?
> 
> Sometimes when you use more than one program to play music, the other program will scan through the library and start sorting it and moving songs. I had this happen before, one program would move files based on its sort, then the other program didn't know where to look for it. For example, in my iTunes, any compilations are sorted by artist, not the album, thus the song is located in the respective artist's folder. But when Windows Media sorted through the library, it sorted my compilations via album not artist. It thus moved the songs to a "various artists" folder. Then when I went to iTunes all my compilations were missing, they were physically still on the hard drive, but moved to a different location.


I don't think so.
These media programs just make lists based on their own sorting method. The original files are left in place. 
You can check this with Rt-Click/Show file location and you'll see the files themselves haven't been moved, regardless of the sort method.
One exception seems to be Itunes' making aac files out of your WMA files, which can just be skipped.
Itunes is a tremendously bloated piece of software that seems to cause no end of problems.


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