Right, I've had it with itunes so I'm asking for advice on here, as we appear to have a few IT 'geeks' amongst us.

Basically I'm having issues ripping CDs to my hard drive. I have a works computer with an external hard drive for all my personal stuff, including music. I've had multiple laptops because they keep breaking and everytime I get a new one, the directory assignment of my HD changes and I have to install iTunes, along with all my music again. I am currently on my 4th re-install in just over 12 months. I tried just importing files to the library before (to save ripping all of my music) but iTunes mad a right mess of it, with multiple files, songs out of albums etc. so I've not done that again!

Any way, my current problem is this. When I first copied my music over about 2 years ago, I had no issues ripping the majority of my collection. However, the last few times some CDs haven't copied. iTunes recognises that they are in the drive, finds all the relevant track info but when it tries to copy, it gets stuck tries for a few minutes and then jumps to the next song, where the same thing happends etc. The songs then come up in my library, but they have no time signature to them and essentially aren't there, you can't play them or anything. This is happening on CDs I have happily copied before. I've read about copy protection, but surely this would protect it the first time, and not just subsequent times?

Additionally, sometimes when I put CDs in, iTunes doesn't recognise the CD is there at all. I ave to eject and re-insert, sometimes 3 or 4 times before it is recognised. I've read about drivers needing updating for the disc drive, but it's a new laptop, could this be an issue? Also, other programmes (windows media player for example) will recognise the CD. Sometimes, no matter how many times I re-insert the disc, it isn't recognised by iTunes at all.

Finally, not all the album artwork is available. I know some CDs won't have it, but there are albums that I have had artwork for before, that now 'can't be found'. What's up with that?

I'm getting pretty pissed with iTunes and the constant updates. I'm sure they're trying to make it difficult to copy music so people will download digitally. All very well, but I have several hundred CDs I want to listen too and I'll be damned if I'm going to download them all!

Any help is appreciated. I know this isn't an Apple forum, but I have been on there anf followed relevant advice to no avail. I can't think I'm the only one who's had this porblem. Could it be the laptop?

Simon

I rarely use iTunes. However I just have a folder for music on my computer, whether it's downloaded or ripped. When I install iTunes I just "import files to iTunes library" and it copies them all into it.

As i mentioned, I did this and iTunes fucked it up (or I did something wrong). I had files all over the place, not in the correct albums etc. Not sure what happened there!

It is a nightmare for sure! Mines got so many duplicates of songs, and my hard drive is full so I can't even back my phone up but the hassle of setting up a new HDD isn't very entertaining.

Sure your disc drive is ok? (did you say was external? Or was that your HDD)?

Model?

Make? (guessing apple by the last sentence)

This issue is actually not all that uncommon to be honest, just to clarify however is this a desktop or a laptop?

Also for the comment on making it harder, if they are legal physical copies of the music you can import them no matter what, it is illegal for apple to place it within their policy to state otherwise so this is unlikely.

iTunes itself is a very........odd piece of software depending on what it is being run on, however from what you are saying this could equally be as much of a hardware fault.

Have you tried to check if the CD-ROM/DVD-RW drive is actually working properly, check the drivers for it and make sure that is okay first.

If it says they are all okay then actually test it with a different piece of software using a couple of disks you know iTunes had issues with, this will give a more accurate test with the drive to see if its just an occasional or sometimes it wants to and sometimes it doesn't scenario.

Try to narrow down the problem to one of the two iTunes or the drive itself, without knowing what OS i am dealing with i cant really go into further technical detail i am afraid.

The copying from hard drive thing does sometimes happen this is because iTunes is generally just stupid, best way to avoid this is to just make sure they are all organised properly, also check the folder size on your external drive, when copying the files across look at the size of the transfer this will usually tell you in any difference in size and most likely in that case your HDD copying the files twice.

It's an HP something or other running windows 7. I refered to Apple forums to get advice on the problem. I'm sure things would be simpler with a Mac book or such.

I can only asssume the drive is fine as all other programs and DVDs seem to work fine. I'm assuming the driver is ok too as it's a brand new machine (at least it was 6 months ago). I read about the problem re copying CDs but them not actually being made into files and it said to remove the auto-fault correction thing which I did. No change

It's an HP something or other running windows 7. I refered to Apple forums to get advice on the problem. I'm sure things would be simpler with a Mac book or such.

I can only asssume the drive is fine as all other programs and DVDs seem to work fine. I'm assuming the driver is ok too as it's a brand new machine (at least it was 6 months ago). I read about the problem re copying CDs but them not actually being made into files and it said to remove the auto-fault correction thing which I did. No change

Would it not be worth ripping them through another programme like windows media player then saving them all in a folder?

windows media player also seems to be playing up. I can't seem to set a library folder up

windows media player also seems to be playing up. I can't seem to set a library folder up

That's strange then, don't know what else to suggest

Okay this is going to be a bit of a problem haha.

On Windows this will be a much more easier process though as i actually know where I'm going, Mac's are amazing until they go wrong, in which case i normally bail

Right there are a few more possibilities that could potentially cause this.

The one i am hoping it is not is actually the drivers etc for your Motherboard, which if its a pre-made machine then this mean a lot of fiddling and downloading as you don't have the discs to do it and it also includes resetting the whole damn machine.

There might be a corruption within the actual windows files that could be causing this problem to occur, sometimes windows registry's etc can cause major cock ups even when they have nothing to do with the problem (yes makes no sense but this is Microsoft remember).

Id advise starting the machine in safe mode with no networking capabilities before trying anything else, after this go onto your start menu, then at the search bar enter "run" and press enter, then enter into the Run text box "cmd" this will then bring up a small black command box, into this you want to enter "chkdsk [volume] /f /r" where i have put volume you want to put which disk drive you are checking so for example the most common one would be your c: drive so put "chkdsk c: /f /r" the /r and /f are commands for what it should do during the chkdsk scan, /f will attempt to fix corrupted files and data and /r will find and try to repair any bad sectors on your hard drive.

Chkdsk report close codes are:

0

No errors were found.

1

Errors were found and fixed.

2

Performed disk cleanup (such as garbage collection) or did not perform cleanup because /f was not specified.

3

Could not check the disk, errors could not be fixed, or errors were not fixed because /f was not specified.

See if anything comes up and let me know whats what chap :-)