How to completely reset iTunes 11 playlist and library and start fresh

Here’s a quick and easy method to reset or refresh your iTunes Library or Playlists and start fresh as if you have just installed iTunes 11 for the first time.

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Quick steps to reset and start fresh with iTunes 11 Playlists and Libraries

1. Exit iTunes
2. Click Start button – Music – iTunes
3. Rename “iTunes Library” to something like “iTunes Library.old” (This is a ITL File)
4. Rename “iTunes Music Library” to something like “iTunes Music Library.old” (This is a XML file)
5. Done, Now start your iTunes as fresh as a new installation, and start importing music files and folders. That’s it.

The Story Behind how I messed with my iTunes playlist

iTunes 11 is my favorite music player on my Windows 7 machine. But one day I ended up with a messed up playlist.

When I tried to play my favorite song it prompted an annoying message saying ” The song “My favorite song” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?”, then I clicked on “Locate“ and browsed to the new location where I have moved the music file.

Once I located the new file, iTunes tried to locate and grab the other missing file too ” Would you like iTunes to use the location of “My favorite song” to find other missing files in your library?” , I clicked on “Find Files“, and it was great to see iTunes automatically locate the other missing files ” iTunes was able to locate all of the missing files”.

This looked pretty easy for the first time, but soon it looked like a nightmare to locate missing  music file again and again and again. But why did I ran into this issue, simple, I have either renamed, moved or even deleted a song or folder from my hard drive. I thought, uninstalling and re-installing iTunes 11 will fix this issue and I can start from the beginning but it didn’t work. After a while I found the fix and have posted it above.