Ipod 4th gen. 20g help please

[chata]

Hey all,

Weirdest thing. My 4th generation ipod quit working. I went to the ipod store, they tried to reset it.....no go. I bring it home, reset it with itunes and it works. Unfortunately, all the music is obviously wiped out from the reset. I am reinstalling all the library, 2022 songs. The bummer is that in my itunes library 60% of the songs in the "music" library have an "!" next to the box you check to include or remove the song from the ipod. I highlight the song and it says the file cannot be found, but it is sitting in the library. Coincidentally, before my ipod went crazy, I "COULD NOT" play these songs through the computer yet they were in the ipod and would play normally through the ipod. I am flustered now, That is alot of music.:( Please help if you can.

[acee2bee]

before you worry too much, i have had itunes magically forget songs locations before. the itunes db kept getting f'd,but the songs where all still there. was a problem of bad ram for me. but the cause here is unknown, and i'll try to illustrate some ways to get you back in working condition based on afformentioned info you provided.

the ! just means itunes doesn't know where the song is. if it is sitting in the library, and by that i'm assuming you mean the file is in username:music:itunes:itunes\ music:artist:album: then when you do the info and would like to locate it, simply select locate and point to that particular song. or delete all the songs with the ! and add them to your library again. this however will lose your metadata that itunes has on said files, namely playcount, star rating, maybe more depending on the file and its format (wavs/aiffs lose everything).

or because i wasn't sure what you were saying about being in the library-if you simply meant you saw the titles in itunes, and the files were located on said ipod, but not on your local drive, then you are kind of screwed. unless of course you have these files stored elsewhere, ie another hdd or a cd/dvd. then, again you can point itunes to that file location when it says it can't find it or readd it to your library as mentioned previously.

so it all depends on where those files actually where. if solely on the ipod, you are sol. if not, find them. could be time consuming if its a large number of songs that are missing, which by your data suggest 1212-1213 songs missing.

more info could be helpful in suggesting a plan of action, if this isn't sufficient enough for you. hope it helps