Limewire WIPED out my itunes taking ALL of my songs!

[dramedy720]

I downloaded some songs last week & my computer (I'm now a horrible Mac user) just crashed while I was downloading. When I turned it back on itunes was salvaging some songs 4,670 to be exact were recovered.

Once that completed ALL of my playlists on my itunes was gone replaced by 3 empty Limewire playlists. Trying NOT to panic I opened my limewire & lo & behold the Limewire which is NOT my default player had over 9,000 of my songs in it's library... what happened?!?!?

I miss my playlists... OH & for some reason all the online media players like youtube & MySpace no longer play sound & I've updated adobe SEVERAL times... did I download a virus by accident? Shite... I thought Macs didn't get viruses

SOOOOOOOOOOO here's where I need you, I'm thinking of deleting all the 4,670 songs on my itunes to avoid duplicates, how do I add all the songs back? Gosh, I hope I made sense I really need to clean all of this up. Thanks again

[Lord of the Rings]

I'm not altogether clear on how you had things set up. Do you have auto-importing set up between iTunes & LW? That's where the songs are added to iTunes music library. Don't confuse this with the LW playlist that shows in iTunes.

Under iTunes File menu, there is an option to show duplicates. You can scan through that list to rid of duplicates. However can still be a long time process. iTunes compares the names only when showing duplicates, so checking their file size, bit rate, length etc. is wise.

To add the songs back to iTunes, go to your LW download folder. You can simply drag & drop the LW download folder onto iTunes Library icon at top right of the iTunes window (adding 9,000 songs at once will take a very long time.) However it's best to add them more slowly. Such as selecting first 50 - 200 or so & drag-drop them onto iTunes Library icon. Go through later and check for duplicates.

You will probably need to re-create playlists. Yes that could be a nuisance but see if the playlists are working after you add the songs back to iTunes first.

[dramedy720]

I had auto-importing... what do you think happened? It's so damn BIZARRE, thanks for the quick reply