You may need to reinstall iTunes if your hard drive crashes or if you're having problems with your computer. If you suffer a hard drive crash, the best thing to do is to restore everything from a backup of your hard drive. If you don't have a backup, you'll need to reinstall everything from scratch. For iTunes, that means downloading a copy from Apple's Web site and following the installation instructions. That's simple enough, but restoring your music library can get tricky.

Rebuilding Your iTunes Library
There are a few different methods available for you to try to restore your music library.

The first method to try is to use your iPod to restore the music library to your computer. If you are lucky, your iPod contains all or a majority of your iTunes music library, so you can copy the files from the iPod back onto your computer. You can use a utility program like Music Rescue, CopyTrans or iPod Copy to restore the files. Be sure to do this before you try to reinstall iTunes, otherwise you will erase the contents of your iPod.

Once you restore your music from the iPod to the computer, simply reauthorize the computer to play purchased music for the iTunes store.

You can also try to restore the music via the iPod without using a utility program. If a majority of the music in your library consists of songs purchased from iTunes, and you use Version 7 of iTunes or later, reinstall the software and use the "transfer purchases from iPod" function under the File menu.

• Previous Page
• 1
• 2
• Next Page