Entertainment For Lively Minds
ATM: iTunes query - my precious play counts!
Posted by Moose the Mooche on 5 February 2012 - 2:30pm.
Folks! Your indulgence, I crave!
My PC died on Friday, so I've bought meself a new one. Now, how do I get my iTunes library back? I don't mean the music, I know how to do that: I mean playcounts, playlists, ratings. Presumably all of that info is sitting on my iPod... how do I get it into the iTunes on my new PC?
[...Incidentally, judgmentalism from Mac users should be tempered by the fact that I have to stay with Mr Gates for work reasons, or I would have crossed over years ago]
Thank you for your pity. The fact is that if I can't find out what I was listening to at 3pm on 21st August 2010 my life will lose all meaning.
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You'd be a fool
to take my word for it, but my understanding is all that information (playcounts, ratings etc.) isn't stored on your iPod, which doesn't run iTunes, just the music.
To add meaning to your life, I suggest downloading The Latters album (see above). Resistance is useless.
I don't think you can, Moose
I bought a Mac last year and when I started iTunes up for the first time - having very carefully saved my library - all the play counts etc. had been lost... Very frustrating, but not the end of the world; well, not for me at least.
Obviously, you should have bought a Mac
and I could tell you to look in your Music folder and copy the iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Library.itl files, wherein all such data is stored. I think it's called the same thing on a Windows PC so - if your old PC is not totally kaput - maybe a search for these file names will turn them up. Copy it and place it in the same place on your new PC.
Mark
See above. I wish you'd been around when I bought my Mac...
You can find scripts that will
set playcounts to whatever value you want. I'm sure someone here can oblige or you might have a look on t'internet. (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=addorsubtractplaycount)
If it's a desktop PC
have you tried booting it into Safe Mode by pressing F8 when it starts up? The PC won't be fully functioning but you should be able to access the iTunes library.
If it won't start at all, you might be able to salvage the hard drive. Switch off and Unplug all the power cables, take the back off the PC and remove the hard drive (it will have a ribbon cable in the back and a power connector). You need to purchase a Hard Drive caddy which you can pop your old drive in. It will provide power and add a USB connector to your old drive turning it into an external hard drive. You can then hook this up to your new PC and hopefully retrieve your iTunes library.
Of course, Macs never ever go wrong and Apple Ipods are robust, reliable and definitely don't inexplicably break down after 3 years of light use, and Apple definitely encourage you to repair them yourself rather than throwing them on to landfill so you can buy the latest overpriced piece of plastic from them.
Thanks Doc
Haven't even tried the old PC yet. Like many of the Massive my priority was my music so less important stuff like irreplaceable family photographs and documents has been forgotten until I have the time to investigate. When I do I'll follow your methods.
The lesson being: back everything up regularly and don't buy a piece-of-sh*t Acer Aspire that barbecues your leg.
...
...
UPDATE: Problem solved, pretty much
Not having the tech-smarts or the patience to find any other way, I forked out a tenner for something called iGadget which has done what I wanted - albeit with a bit of gentle cajoling. I don't think I've lost anything, apart from quite a lot of artwork - though I've been an iTunes user for long enough to know that artwork can go missing at any time for no apparent reason.
I remain convinced that there must be a (free) back-door way of doing this, but so far this has worked for me.
Anyway thanks chaps. It's been hard work listening to all the music I've listened to in the last two years and I'm just glad that the historical record survives.
Note to self: Get life.