LL, 95% of my music is in mp3 format and some are left in the reg, they all play when they are in itunes folder. You don't have to convert them I did because I put them on an IPod and because I would burn them to a cd for the car and I could get 22 songs on the CD instead of 10 or 12. I convert them to MP3 by using Roxio, but other software will do it also. I make a playlist in Itunes...under file, "new",name it, then copy and past the songs from my music folders to the playlists in ITunes. It may take some practice. I have a playlist for my favorite songs. When I hear one I really like, I copy and paste it in favorites. It will then be in my favorites and in songs. If I had it to do over I would copy and paste them straight to the playlist and they automatically goes to "songs". I had a lot of duplicates leaning how to do this. If I want to listen to one particular singer or all songs I click on the right option and I set the controls to random. You can delete any songs from the playlists. It will ask "from the computer or just the folder". I would suggest when you get this set up like you want it back the music folders so you don't have to do this all again. If you buy a new computer and need to install Itunes again it will/should install with your folders just like they were. Aren't computers wonderful? I don't travel any more and don't need an ipod so I bought a radio with an ipod dock and can listen to a thousand songs in random if I want. The radio is a Memorex and sounds as good as my Bose. Very nice. I love music, I call it therapy for the soul. My taste in music has changed over the years, I love some of all music.

How are you sure it is Itunes that is removing your music? I have an older computer with XP that does have Itunes and I have never lost any music on it. I also have a two month old laptop with Vista that never has had Itunes installed. I ripped 2 CD's with music a few days ago on the laptop. The music was OK for a couple days and now all that is there is the folders where the music was. When I open them, there is no music in them. Both computers have CCleaner and I use it daily to keep things running better.

More info: TFC (Temp File Cleaner) will clear out all temp folders for all user accounts (temp, IE temp, java, FF, Opera, Chrome, Safari), including Administrator, All Users, LocalService, NetworkService, and any other accounts in the user folder. It also cleans out the %systemroot%\temp folder and checks for .tmp files in the %systemdrive% root folder, %systemroot%, and the system32 folder (both 32bit and 64bit on 64bit OSs). It shows the amount removed for each location found (in bytes) and the total removed (in MB). Before running, it will stop Explorer and all other running applications. When finished, if a reboot is required the user must reboot to finish clearing any in-use temp files. -- TFC only cleans temp folders. -- TFC will not clean URL history, prefetch, or cookies. Depending on how often someone cleans their temp folders, their system hardware, and how many accounts are present, it can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. TFC will completely clear all temp files where other temp file cleaners may fail.

Have you purchased songs and/or video that are protected? If so, you'll also want to make sure you decommission the old PC AFTER transferring the songs and videos. With protected content, there's a limit to how many devices it can be copied to. I don't think decommission is the right word, but it's something like that. It frees that license so you can transfer to another computer. One way I've done it is to just copy the itunes folder in My Music to an external drive, then copy that to the new computer.