iTunes for Windows: Unknown duplicate locations, lots of "broken tracks"

Question

With over 18,000 tracks, manually fixing each one would be pure murder. I am looking for a way to 1) find all the broken tracks (show up with an exclamation mark next to the track indicating the iTunes database can't find the track in its listed path) and then 2)remove all the duplicates. After a recovery, files are all over the place and am looking for an automated way to determine where the problems are.

The issue which may not be clear (and thus, with things like doublekiller) is this: it may be a duplicate track but which duplicate is the one iTunes is referencing in its DB?

I know, a hot royal mess...

Answer 1

Ouch! I had the same problem with my daughters computer when I moved Itunes over from Vista to Windows 7. She had songs located all over the hard drive and didn't tell me.

The first question is did you move some files? Links are usually lost when a file is moved.

The best thing to do is move all your songs into one Itunes directory, and reload the links again into Itunes. This removes the tedious task of going through the library and removing duplicates Unless you have the same song twice in the same folder.

You will lose your play count which my wonderful daughter pointed out and almost killed me over.

There is some free software out to remove duplicates, and some cool pay software to really make your song collection correct and accurate.

Cool Pay Apps:

• http://www.tidysongs.com/
• http://www.tuneupmedia.com/index

Good Luck..

Answer 2

Find Broken Tracks

1. Highlight your entire library (Ctrl+A)
2. Using left mouse button, click and hold down on any portion of highlighted tracks, and drag the cursor a couple inches. Hold that position until the mouse pointer icon changes into a red circle with # of songs it thinks you are trying to move/copy.
3. When you see the red cursor you can let go. iTunes will have updated all the highlighted songs that are broken with a "!"

Remove Dead Tracks

Apple provides a script to do this in both Mac and Win. You can search for it on google ("itunes SDK"). That will require creating an account on their site. If you're running windows and just want the script google search RemoveDeadTracks.js

Answer 3

To remove dead tracks, this solution worked for me. Since I could not delete the dead listings straight from the smart playlist, I did need to add an extra step:

Highlight all the dead tracks and right click Uncheck Selection. Then you can easily group them in your regular view by sorting by the checkmark column.