Migration Questions
Couple of questions for you guys about migrating from my old iMac G4, to my new iMac G5 with iSight ... no Intel ... missed that by 2 days!
Migration Assitant didn't work, so I've got the old one in TD mode and I've been dragging everything over. I've copied the entire user/library , user/music , and user/pictures. My iPhoto library copied over great with pictures and albums intact, iTunes wasn't so lucky ... all my music made it over, but albums and ratings and play counts didn't. Any idea where those might be hiding?
Next, I installed MS Office 2004 S/T from the CD and all, and I opened it and when it opened it says an unexpectd error occured while trying to load the microsoft framework library. That never happened on my old computer. What's up here?
The new iMac also has a habit of resetting some system prefs when I log out or restart. Date and time and screensaver are a few. Any ideas there?
Thanks for any help you can give! Always appreciated!
Chris
Migration Assitant didn't work, so I've got the old one in TD mode and I've been dragging everything over. I've copied the entire user/library , user/music , and user/pictures. My iPhoto library copied over great with pictures and albums intact, iTunes wasn't so lucky ... all my music made it over, but albums and ratings and play counts didn't. Any idea where those might be hiding?
Next, I installed MS Office 2004 S/T from the CD and all, and I opened it and when it opened it says an unexpectd error occured while trying to load the microsoft framework library. That never happened on my old computer. What's up here?
The new iMac also has a habit of resetting some system prefs when I log out or restart. Date and time and screensaver are a few. Any ideas there?
Thanks for any help you can give! Always appreciated!
Chris
Comments
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
Migration Assitant didn't work
That's odd. What happened?
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
iTunes wasn't so lucky ... all my music made it over, but albums and ratings and play counts didn't. Any idea where those might be hiding?
what do you mean by Albums?
A lot of information in mp3/aac files is stored in the music file itself, in "tags". There are no tags for play count or star rating, so these (along with loads of other info) are stored by iTunes in a huge file called "iTunes library".
before I give any advice, please let me know which versions of iTunes you have on each machine.
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
Next, I installed MS Office 2004 S/T from the CD and all, and I opened it and when it opened it says an unexpectd error occured while trying to load the microsoft framework library. That never happened on my old computer. What's up here?
The new iMac also has a habit of resetting some system prefs when I log out or restart. Date and time and screensaver are a few. Any ideas there?
Thanks for any help you can give! Always appreciated!
Chris
These problems are also odd. Is your old mac running 10.4? If not, copying the whole user/library might not have been such a great idea.
The date and time resetting suggests there is something wrong with the power management unit. Try resetting it. If that doesn't work, try resetting PRAM, a link to how to do this is in the article I've linked to. If that doesn't work, I'd suggest a trip to a genius bar.
As for iTunes, I'm running 6.0.1 on the G4 and 6.0.2 on the G5. When I say albums, I mean the lists on the left hand side of iTunes where I have "all beatles songs" "all comedy skits", etc.
The G4 is running 10.4.3 at the moment, and as a follow-up my computer is no longer resetting the time and date prefs. I trashed the old plist file and it took care of it. The Office 04 problem I also solved by applying the 11.2.1 update from Microsoft's website, so really as of now, my only concern is getting my iTunes library copied smoothly over so I don't lose any of the metadata.
Thanks a bunch
Chris
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
I don't know what the deal was with Migration Assistant. It just kept spinng on step one and calculating remaining space and time. I let it run for 10 hours + and still did get past that step. The old iMac only had an 80GB HDD.
Weird. Anyway, it's over now, but I'm sorry it didn't work out for you, as it's a pretty cool feature.
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
As for iTunes, I'm running 6.0.1 on the G4 and 6.0.2 on the G5. When I say albums, I mean the lists on the left hand side of iTunes where I have "all beatles songs" "all comedy skits", etc.
Oh, ok. For future reference, those are called playlists.
You should be able to copy iTunes' "management files" and prefs over from the G4 without any harm, assuming you haven't added any songs to your library since. If you have added some, no damage will be done, those new songs will still be on your hard drive, but they won't appear in iTunes and you'll have to re-add them manually.
Here's what to do:
1. Quit iTunes on both machines
2. On the G5, go to the folder ~/music/itunes/, where ~ is your home directory.
3. Drag all the files which are inside that folder to the desktop. Leave the folder "iTunes music" where it is
4. Go to ~/library/preferences/ and find all files starting com.apple.itunes and move them to the desktop
5. Go to the folder ~/library/caches and move the folder com.apple.itunes to the desktop.
6. Shut down the G5 and connect it to your G4 in Target mode.
7. On the G4, go to the folder ~/music/itunes/
8. Copy all the files which are inside that folder to the corresponding folder on the G5's hard drive.
9. Go to ~/library/preferences/ on the G4, find all files starting com.apple.itunes and move them to the corresponding folder on the G5's hard drive.
10. You don't need to copy the caches folder. Reboot the G5 and launch iTunes.
Everything should be copied over now. If it is, you can delete the files dragged to the desktop in steps 3, 4, and 5. If not, let me know.
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
The G4 is running 10.4.3 at the moment, and as a follow-up my computer is no longer resetting the time and date prefs. I trashed the old plist file and it took care of it. The Office 04 problem I also solved by applying the 11.2.1 update from Microsoft's website, so really as of now, my only concern is getting my iTunes library copied smoothly over so I don't lose any of the metadata.
Cool. Glad to hear you sorted those problems.
Originally posted by Mr. H
You should be able to copy iTunes' "management files" and prefs over from the G4 without any harm, assuming you haven't added any songs to your library since. If you have added some, no damage will be done, those new songs will still be on your hard drive, but they won't appear in iTunes and you'll have to re-add them manually.
Here's what to do:
1. Quit iTunes on both machines
2. On the G5, go to the folder ~/music/itunes/, where ~ is your home directory.
3. Drag all the files which are inside that folder to the desktop. Leave the folder "iTunes music" where it is
4. Go to ~/library/preferences/ and find all files starting com.apple.itunes and move them to the desktop
5. Go to the folder ~/library/caches and move the folder com.apple.itunes to the desktop.
6. Shut down the G5 and connect it to your G4 in Target mode.
7. On the G4, go to the folder ~/music/itunes/
8. Copy all the files which are inside that folder to the corresponding folder on the G5's hard drive.
9. Go to ~/library/preferences/ on the G4, find all files starting com.apple.itunes and move them to the corresponding folder on the G5's hard drive.
10. You don't need to copy the caches folder. Reboot the G5 and launch iTunes.
Everything should be copied over now. If it is, you can delete the files dragged to the desktop in steps 3, 4, and 5. If not, let me know.
Well, I did all that but when I go to open iTunes an error window pops up. All that's in it is a big red octogon with an exclamation point and small iTunes icon on its bottom right and there's no message, just the option to push OKAY which quits the program ... any ideas as to what's going on?
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
Well, I did all that but when I go to open iTunes an error window pops up. All that's in it is a big red octogon with an exclamation point and small iTunes icon on its bottom right and there's no message, just the option to push OKAY which quits the program ... any ideas as to what's going on?
Hmmm... odd.
Oh well. Sorry it didn't work. Just have to do it the long way.
Quit iTunes, delete the files that you moved from the G4, and put the files that you dragged to the desktop back where they came from.
iTunes should now launch ok.
To move your star ratings and playlists:
On the G4, open iTunes, and create five new smart-playlists, one for each star-rating. Now, highlight the first playlist, go to the file menu and choose "export song list". Save the file with a sensible file name in a sensible place. Do this for all your playlists. When finished, copy all the exported files to the G5.
Now, on the G5, launch iTunes and go to File:Import. Choose the first file exported from the G4 and click ok. You should now have copied your first playlist. Repeat for all the exported files. You should now have copied over all your playlists.
To fully restore the star-ratings:
Select the 1 * playlist. Select all the songs in the playlist, then control-click on one of them to bring up the contextual menu. Use the menu option to apply a 1 * rating. Repeat for the four other star-rating playlists. Once you've done that, you can delete the star-rating playlists.
If you really want to copy over play-count, you could use a similar method. I think there may be some applescripts out there to help you if you want. In fact, I believe there's a whole site dedicated just to iTunes scripts.
Good luck.
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
Hey there ... I replaced those files and deleted the old ones and I still get the same screen. I'm thinking about trashing everything in ~/music/itunes and starting over from the old computer, since I've only added 2 songs to the new one. Is this simpler, and if so is there a way to get my song information to the new one? This has me really confused now, but I do appreciate the help. I'm patient and can wait it out
Hi Ag. Thanks for being so patient and not getting mad.
This is most odd. Yes, it would seem that it's time to trash all traces of iTunes (apart from the app itself) from your G5 and copy everything over from the G4 again. Since you've got 6.0.2 on the G5, I'd recommend upgrading the version on the G4 before copying stuff.
I've just had a look at my itunes.plist file, and it looks like copying that over isn't such a great plan. If you copy everything in ~/music over to the G5, you should get everything, including star ratings, playcounts and playlists. Good luck.
Originally posted by Mr. H
Hi Ag. Thanks for being so patient and not getting mad.
This is most odd. Yes, it would seem that it's time to trash all traces of iTunes (apart from the app itself) from your G5 and copy everything over from the G4 again. Since you've got 6.0.2 on the G5, I'd recommend upgrading the version on the G4 before copying stuff.
I've just had a look at my itunes.plist file, and it looks like copying that over isn't such a great plan. If you copy everything in ~/music over to the G5, you should get everything, including star ratings, playcounts and playlists. Good luck.
All righty ... I finally got it fixed, and here's what I did...
1) After trashing all iTunes files and still getting the same error I trashed the app itself.
2) Inserted the Mac OS X 10.4.2 System Restore disk that came with the iMac and clicked on optional installs (oddly enough, it's not included with the rest of the iLife Suite, which is in the Bundled Software package)
3) On the install screen, I clicked applications (yes, it'll install a bunch of other stuff, but it leaves them all untouched apparently) which should contain iTubnes among other things such as X11, iCal, etc.
4) The installer finished and I hooked the G4 up in Target Disk Mode and copied everything in ~/music/itunes (three things: iTunes Music Folder, ITunes Music Library Data File and iTunes Music Library.xml) over to ~/music/itunes on the G5.
5) I went to the iTunes download page and downloaded version 6.0.2
6) Opened the application and BOOM ... it's all there! music files, playlists, ratings and play history ... all my prefs and scripts copied over fine too.
7) Reauthorized my computer so I could play my iTMS downloads
Thanks for the help Mr. H, I do appreciate it.
To anyone that browses this in the future, I advise that you upgrade the old iTunes before trying to do transfers. It really is a simple procedure ... simply copy the three things specified earlier over to the new mac and you're good to go. Hope no one else has to do it the hard way like I did!
P.S. - Don't know if this is related or not and it's really not a big deal, but whenever I "right" click on something, like a picture and want to open it in something else, I have a huge list of files and some of them are duplicated (Safari, Firefox, QuickTime, RealPlayer, etc...). Any idea what might cause this and if there's a way to get rid of them. If not, its no big deal ... the main this is my iTunes library is safe and sound. Thanks again!
Originally posted by AgNuke1707
P.S. - Don't know if this is related or not and it's really not a big deal, but whenever I "right" click on something, like a picture and want to open it in something else, I have a huge list of files and some of them are duplicated (Safari, Firefox, QuickTime, RealPlayer, etc...). Any idea what might cause this and if there's a way to get rid of them. If not, its no big deal ... the main this is my iTunes library is safe and sound. Thanks again!
Hi Ag, glad you got it working, and thanks for giving details for others' future reference.
The "launch services database" is what keeps track of which apps can open which files. I'm sure that if you visit places such as macosxhints.com and osxfaq.com you can learn all about it. I'd suggest only messing with it if you are confident that you know enough about it.