how to share 1 pc with 3 itunes accounts?

pinkpinkfizz

Hi
yet another itunes problem...
Firstly,
My DH has a 30gb ipod video which he's had for a few years, (it's pretty full up too) and the problem is that the pc that was used for his itunes account had to get reset and the person doing the reset didn't use itunes back up to disk facility, they just manually backed up to disk, so when we re-installed i tunes and put each of the disks in to reload the actual songs, it never worked properly again, you can't click on a track to play, it says something like "insert original disk as file can't be located" (sorry thats a rough guess, as its been like this for so long now that I've not tried to play anything for ages) it has a triangle with an exclaimation mark next to the tracks in the library. I've often wondered if/ how we could use his ipod to get him a working version of itunes but don't know how this would work? advice welcome.

Also in the family we have 4 other ipod touches, the twins had their own pc and shared an itunes acccount, my daughter shares an itunes account with me and my dh's itunes is on a 3rd pc. I want to only have 2 pc's up and running.
Can someone tell me how I can have both my dh's itunes and my twin boy's itunes on 1 pc and resolve the problem with my Dh's itunes???
does that even make sense?? :eek:
Thanks in advance

nomoreheroes

Cannot help with the first part but the best way to have several iPods using one pc is to have seperate windows user accounts. Then you just make sure that anyone who wants to connect their iPod logs onto their windows user account first. We have three iPods using one pc with no problems.

sickofusernames

Hi, I think I understand what you're trying to do, check this link and have a look at Method 2. I was going to do something similar but never got round to bothering - good job as she doesn't use my old Ipod anyway now!

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1495

As for the first issue, you mean the computer lost all of the original files off the PC leaving just the Ipod with the tunes on? I don't think you'd be able to resolve this unless there's some dodgy utility on the web to restore the files back to the PC - i'd imagine it's to do with illegal file sharing security to be honest.

pinkpinkfizz

Hi,
Thanks for the replies.
I had googled for an answer before I posted, so I suppose I should really have said has anyone done this, and is it straight forward?

And it all seems to be made worse by the fact that my husbands itunes is messed up to start off with. i think i'll try to get the other itunes accounts sorted first and then attempt to recover his.
He has hours and hours and hours worth of music and I'm worried I'll end up losing the lot, (at least it works on his ipod at the moment)

thanks for your help,

HO87

Sorry to hear about your situation but been there and made the video - well just rebuilt iTunes. I have a 30GB Touch and have suffered 2 instances where iTunes would not recognise it for some weird reason which is effectively the same situation as you are in i.e. the only usable part of the combination is the your OH's iPod.

In the past I have used iDump (this is freeware although there is a Pro version which provides a free 30 day trial) which copied the tracks off the ipod and allowed me to rebuild the tracks within iTunes. This worked absolutely fine First time around although the whole process took a couple of hours I seem to recall. However, the last time this happened I couldn't get iDump to work for some reason and had to find another option.

Finally I ended up getting a tool called CopyTrans Suite which was pretty idiot proof although it was not a free option and ran out at about £12-14. Also available from the same people is a tool called iLibs which was about the same price but can be bought in a bundle IIRC. It enables you to manage multiple ITunes accounts from one computer.

However, you don't actually need to buy any extra software to set up multiple iTunes accounts (i.e. run several iPods from one computer) as iTunes allows you to do this anyway - as my son told me - after I'd bought iLibs and it doesn't involve them using differing user profiles on the computer itself. These are the instructions from Apple Support.

Hope that helps.