PC/I-Tunes help

cloudy-day

Hi, I wonder if someone can help me.

First I have to see I know very little about I-Tunes! Over the summer, I downloaded our CDs to the PC via I-Tunes. Then put this onto 3 I-Pod Shuffles. This was purely for the holiday, and we haven’t changed the playlists since. Its all CDs, we didn’t buy anything from I-Tunes.

Well, the PC broke (basically wouldn’t boot-up) in September. It was on its last legs and everything had been removed – except the I-Tunes. We bought a laptop and I’ve downloaded I-Tunes to it. Can’t seem to login though. I had hoped that if I connects a shuffle to the laptop we would be able to resume the I-Tunes.

I don’t mind about the downloaded music as I assume that’s held on the broken PC’s hard drive, however, I did expect to be able to see what was on the shuffle, but the laptop just didn’t recognise that there was a shuffle connected to it.

Having had a look on the I-Tunes website, they have a section on ‘Moving I-Tunes to Another PC’, but it does say that the shuffles have to be amended on the old PC first. Given that we can’t access the old PC – what are our options?

All I want to do is start again with the shuffles. So I know I will have to download all the CDs again, but I need the laptop to access the shuffles. How do I do this?

Thanks

LutonGirl

Sorry I can't answer you, but thanks for posting this question. I was about to post something very similar myself about a new iPod Touch. I know there are folk who know much more about this than I do, so I await your responses.

googler

I would try getting the HDD out of the old machine, putting it into a USB caddy, and connecting it to the laptop first, to see if the data on it is accessible. If it is, then there's the possibility that you can copy the whole iTunes library from that disk to the laptop.

"Can’t seem to login though" - do you mean you can't login to the iTunes Store? You don't normally need to login to iTunes to import CDs, nor to Sync an iPod.....

With an iPod connected, can you go to Windows Explorer and browse the computer's drives, and see if it shows the iPod connected as an external drive?

Lastly, consider storing your CDs as mp3s on the laptop, but separately from iTunes. Then, when you want to load them into iTunes, use the 'add folder to library' dialogue.

Keep a backup copy of the mp3s remote from the laptop, on a USB stick, external HDD or CDRs. Then, if the laptop fails, you won't need to rip the CDs again, as you'll have a safety copy of the mp3s, and reloading another iTunes library will be a one-click operation, via the 'add folder to library' dialogue.

almillar

Yes, as you've found, PC to iPod is a one way street unless you get very technical. It's far easier to just grab the iTunes folder from one computer (it's insude Music or My Music), and put it in the same place on the other computer.
Assuming your hard drive is still OK in the old computer, you could take it out and put it into a hard drive enclosure (making it like an external hard drive), plug it into the new computer, copy the iTunes folder over as above, then wipe it and use it as a backup drive.

cloudy-day

Sorry thats way above my ability or understanding.

What about if I took the PC to the PC Doctor store (there's one on the way to work) and get them to look at it? Would that be expensive?

Many thanks for your kind help, and apologies for my lack of techie savvy.

almillar

Considering this is a moneysaving forum, yes it would be much more expensive than doing it yourself. If you ask them to move your iTunes folder from one computer to the other, they should be able to do that for you easily. No idea as to the cost.
What do you mean when you say that the computer wouldn't boot up, but you kept iTunes? What we're talking about here is just a really big copy and paste

googler

cloudy-day wrote: »

Sorry thats way above my ability or understanding..

What is? The questions that I put to you?

For goodness' sake, don't you want to LEARN...??? Don't you, when you find something like this, that's out of your current zone, want to find out more about it, and master it?

JWM

Duplicate post

JWM

Duplicate post

johnnyboyrebel

You can connect any ipod to any pc/mac with itunes. So for example on a new laptop that will have no music in the library if you connect an ipod with music on it, you can copy the music from it into itunes on the laptop. This would simply prevent itunes from doing its normal thing of saying 'there is no music on this laptop' so I will copy this onto the ipod" (ie. it would wipe your ipod clean)

You don't have to do anything on the old pc first. The laptop may say 'this ipod is synced with another machine" but will ask if you wish to continue so just click yes.

custardy

hook up the shuffles to the new computer
it will warn its synced with another itunes
click past that and you will sync and erase the music from the shuffle

simple as that
from there you would need to put the music on the laptop from CD
create playlists etc

you can do it other ways to get the music off the shuffles,hard dries etc but if you want the simplest solution
thats it