Solve : ITunes subdirectory and files suddenly became corrupt!?

1.	Solve : ITunes subdirectory and files suddenly became corrupt!?
Answer» On my Dell Dimension WinXP Home I frequently play tunes from the ITunes player and playlists. The only change made on this PC just before this issue was to remove another application, not ITunes, and then reinstall same. When I tried to access a FILE in the ITunes playlist I see this error message:"The song COULD not be played because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I located the ITunes subdirectory I found the file names had been changed to gobble-de-gook, like some strange character set. And the file is not readable by windows or ITunes. This seems to be the only folder and files affected. Can CHKDSK or anything else correct these files? I ran CHKDSK and it reported errors and asked if I wanted to run CHKDSK /F to fix these errors. Unfortunately there is no previous restore point because I thought Windows did that automatically.Do those files look like this: [file cleanup - saving space - attachment deleted by admin]The file names are actually from the old IBM character set, a mixture of 8 characters, a period and three characters, in the DOS file name fashion. I can't duplicate them here. I've tried a screen shot but I can't capture the directory tree to show you. Anyhow, if I double click on one of these I get an error message from Windows saying "the file is not accessable. Access denied." Before this issue the file had the name of the song and double clicking on it brought up a media player and the music played correctly.What "other" application was it that was removed ? ?The application I removed was called "Desktop Sheet Music" from www.IDDUSA.com BTW, my PC is a dual boot Win98/WinXP. This application was installed on both partitions. Then I removed from both Win98 and WinXP. After I reinstalled it on WinXP only. THen later on I opened ITunes and discovered this file name issue. Hope that is clear enough. [file cleanup - saving space - attachment deleted by admin]Quote a period and three characters What are those three characters? Also, iTunes merely holds libraries only, not songs themselves. Search your computer for *.mp3I appreciate your response. Let me see if I understand what you're saying. I Tunes is simply a pointer file system that points to the MP3 files, simply speaking, right? So when I import music from a CD the actual music is digitized to a location on my HARD drive, in my system to the "I" partition of my secondary hard drive. (My physical C:/ drive is not partitioned. My secondary physical drive is partitioned to F:/, I:/, J:/, K:/, L:/, and M:/.) Partitions G:/ and H:/ are the Win98 partitions. It is possible that while running Win98 this I Tunes folder was accessed and caused the files within to BECOME corrupted?\ BTW I did a search for MP3 files on this PC and it did not LIST any files within the I:/I Tunes Music folder I guess because the three characters after the period are not .mp3. Your comments please, thanks.Quote I Tunes is simply a pointer file system that points to the MP3 files, simply speaking, right? So when I import music from a CD the actual music is digitized to a location on my hard drive Exactly! The location of those files, depends on where they were directed to during CD ripping, so you have to search all partitions.

Answer»

On my Dell Dimension WinXP Home I frequently play tunes from the ITunes player and playlists. The only change made on this PC just before this issue was to remove another application, not ITunes, and then reinstall same. When I tried to access a FILE in the ITunes playlist I see this error message:"The song COULD not be played because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" When I located the ITunes subdirectory I found the file names had been changed to gobble-de-gook, like some strange character set. And the file is not readable by windows or ITunes. This seems to be the only folder and files affected.
Can CHKDSK or anything else correct these files? I ran CHKDSK and it reported errors and asked if I wanted to run CHKDSK /F to fix these errors. Unfortunately there is no previous restore point because I thought Windows did that automatically.Do those files look like this:

[file cleanup - saving space - attachment deleted by admin]The file names are actually from the old IBM character set, a mixture of 8 characters, a period and three characters, in the DOS file name fashion. I can't duplicate them here. I've tried a screen shot but I can't capture the directory tree to show you. Anyhow, if I double click on one of these I get an error message from Windows saying "the file is not accessable. Access denied." Before this issue the file had the name of the song and double clicking on it brought up a media player and the music played correctly.What "other" application was it that was removed ? ?The application I removed was called "Desktop Sheet Music" from www.IDDUSA.com
BTW, my PC is a dual boot Win98/WinXP.
This application was installed on both partitions. Then I removed from both Win98 and WinXP. After I reinstalled it on WinXP only. THen later on I opened ITunes and discovered this file name issue. Hope that is clear enough.

[file cleanup - saving space - attachment deleted by admin]Quote

a period and three characters

What are those three characters?
Also, iTunes merely holds libraries only, not songs themselves. Search your computer for *.mp3I appreciate your response. Let me see if I understand what you're saying. I Tunes is simply a pointer file system that points to the MP3 files, simply speaking, right? So when I import music from a CD the actual music is digitized to a location on my HARD drive, in my system to the "I" partition of my secondary hard drive. (My physical C:/ drive is not partitioned. My secondary physical drive is partitioned to F:/, I:/, J:/, K:/, L:/, and M:/.) Partitions G:/ and H:/ are the Win98 partitions. It is possible that while running Win98 this I Tunes folder was accessed and caused the files within to BECOME corrupted?\
BTW I did a search for MP3 files on this PC and it did not LIST any files within the I:/I Tunes Music folder I guess because the three characters after the period are not .mp3. Your comments please, thanks.Quote

I Tunes is simply a pointer file system that points to the MP3 files, simply speaking, right? So when I import music from a CD the actual music is digitized to a location on my hard drive

Exactly!
The location of those files, depends on where they were directed to during CD ripping, so you have to search all partitions.

Solve : ITunes subdirectory and files suddenly became corrupt!?

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