Brad in San Antonio is getting ready to reformat his computer hard drive. It has become slow and sluggish, so he hopes to speed things up. However, he’s worried about his iTunes music collection.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with iTunes, your computer must be authorized to play your purchases. Further, your purchases will only play on a finite number of computers. If you reformat your drive, iTunes will count it as another computer.

So, deauthorize your computer before you reformat the hard drive. Backing up your music isn’t enough. To deauthorize your computer, open iTunes and click Store>>Deauthorize Computer. Enter your user name and password. Click OK.

You’ll need to reauthorize your computer after the drive’s formatted. Just click Store>>Authorize Computer. Enter your information and click Authorize.

Now, you may not realize that you can deauthorize all your computers at once. You can do this once a year. And it works, even if you don’t have access to all of the computers. You can read more about it in my recent tip.

If you’re using another music program, you may also need to deauthorize your music with that program. Check the help file for more details.