When reinstalling iTunes on a formatted or new PC you naturally want to bring across all of the old library data as well as playlists and so on. If you’re like me and don’t allow iTunes to keep your music folder organised then there’s an easy way to do this.
First, on the old PC open iTunes and go to Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab and find the iTunes Music folder location. The default location is Drive:\My Documents\My Music
Go to that folder and find the folder called iTunes and save it.
Now on the new PC after installing iTunes, go to that location and copy your old iTunes folder into that location.
A possible trap: If you’re also like me and don’t keep your My Music folder in My Documents, you’ll soon discover that Windows XP installs a folder with that name into My Documents by default so when you install iTunes it will create a new iTunes folder in that default location.
To move it to your preferred location, first copy all of your My Music folder into the My Documents\My Music folder (over-write anything already in there). Then move the My Music folder from My Documents to where ever you want it. This will automatically sort out all of the file paths and iTunes will remember where the proper iTunes folder actually is from then on.