Redirecting iTunes, for hundreds of users

[goaliepride]

The question is a bit old hat, with a spin. We have hundreds of users who have iTunes, of course this becomes a space hog. We redirect "my documents" so of course "my music" is also part of that, which under XP we cannot change. I do know how to redirect iTunes for single users.

 

What I'd like to be able to do is redirect iTunes with a script so that it goes to C:\music or something. I need to keep their files in tact. I need to not have to do this by hand each and every time.

 

Has anyone done this? Is there a command line for this?

[mac_shinobi]

If you use regshot you should be able to do it on one pc before and after making the relevant changes to see what it does in the registry - assuming it is regedits that need to be done and this should give you a good idea of what registry changes are done.

 

Then you can create a script using those reg edits that are done as a startup script ?

[MatthewL]

Question here - you allow iTunes on your machines?

[goaliepride]

I will check out regshot, thanks for the suggestion.

 

iTunes by itself isn't much of a problem, ya know? It just plays media files. Some of the uses are legitimate, such as reading of some speeches and things, or music classes. So I don't like to throw the baby out with the bath water. It does cause some headaches though, as you can tell from me having to post.

[jamesreedersmith]

I would say lose itunes and use VLC or K-Lite Media player or even windows media player to play audio files.

[stevehp]

iTunes stores the location of the library/media in a XML file. The location of the library within that XML file is encoded in Base64. Believe me I've tried it that direction, but I ended up using a redirect script for My Music and placing a new My Music folder in the root of the user's local profile. That stops our servers from filling up with iTunes media, but it forces the user to stick to one PC for downloading and syncing.

[SYNACK]

iTunes is an elephant doing the job of a mule on Windows, big, slow and badly coded.

 

That said you can change the my music path in XP via the registry as it is a special shell folder. I never tested it personally as I don't support iElephant but I'm reasonably certain it worked fine for the person at the time.

 

edit:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Edited March 3, 2011 by SYNACK