Where did my itunes library go when my computer crashed?

Question

we all have different accounts on my windows xp and about 2 weeks ago my computer crashed and now we only have HP_administrator. we all had different iTunes libraries on our separate accounts and now none of anyone's music will show up.. where did it go and can i get it back?

Answer 1

Wherever you saved the files, and if you completely reset your computer its gone. Besides, it's iTunes, it sucks.

Answer 2

iTunes saves individual libraries in iTunes Library.xml files. Look in the Documents and Settings folder in the C drive. Follow the user name folder then go into the My Documents folder. There follow the My Music folder. Then go into the iTunes folder. There you'll find the iTunes Library.xml file.

If you can, make a new user account other than administrator (I think you're in safe mode), reboot into that, launch iTunes while holding down either the Atl or Ctrl buttons (I forget which) this will bring up a window asking if you want to create or load a library. Load a library and navigate to where you found the iTunes Library.xml file and load it. That should be it I think. You might want to move the iTuens Library.xml file to a different location, maybe a duplicate path in the new account, before you load it. And you may have to move your music from the iTunes folder under My Documents\My Music\iTunes Music to a duplicate path in the new account as well.

The crash wasn't iTunes' fault if it was Windows that crashed. Whatever you were doing at the time of the crash which I'm guessing it was accessing iTunes in some fashion means that data was being written to the hard drive and the user account in Windows (not iTunes) was messed up along with maybe the iTunes preferences for looking for and loading the library. I'd say it's mainly a FUBARed user account. The data in that account is still there, you just have to make a new account and move the My Documents contents from the old account to the new one.

Also, if data was being written to the hard drive when the computer or Windows crashed then you might want to get something like SpinRite and see if you can recover any data on bad sectors. I'm betting the previous FUBARed account is on a bad sector of the hard drive.