I recently took on the task of upgrading a friends computer from XP to Windows 7. I always forget that doing this also means you have to deal with all of the applications that they have installed. The one app that I have learned to love and hate is iTunes. It actually turns out the transferring the iTunes library was fairly easy except for one tricky part. Here are the steps I completed to transfer their library. Hopefully it helps somebody out. The tricky part was step number seven.
1. Backed up the user profile from the XP machine to the external hard drive.
2. Connected the external hard drive to the new Windows 7 machine.
3. Installed iTunes on the Windows 7 machine. Should be the same version as the old machine.
4. From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\apple computer\iTunes
5. From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\application data\apple computer\itunes to
C:\users\username\appdata\local\apple computer\itunes
6. From the old profile I copied c:\documents and settings\username\my documents\music\itunes to
C:\users\username\music\iTunes
7. The final step I completed was to launch iTunes and open up preferences. On the advanced tab changed the
iTunes media folder location from c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Media to
c:\users\username\music\iTunes\iTunes Music.
Thank you so much this tip. It saved me hours of work and stress. Bless you!
many thanks for this!! you are a genius!!,, thanks!
Awesome, awesome, awesome. You saved my butt!
A few months ago i blindly upgraded from XP to Windows 7 WITHOUT doing a backup file for my iTunes library…
all of the old files are saved to a folder called ‘Windows.Old’… where i can see Itunes listed. I then tried uploading my library to the newly saved iTunes, and it did not work.
A friend of mine gave me your site, to which i wish i would have seen PRIOR to this ‘upgrade’ to Windows 7… however wishing is a waste of time.
Long story short, is there any way to recover my library post upgrade?