I knew there was a reason why I avoided itunes for so long.

Is there any reason why it'll happily import some MP3's from an album but not others? I've imported my music collection after mounting my PC from the MBP, but it has imported half the songs and left the others....

Having tried a 2nd time, it point-blank refuses to acknowledge that the other tracks exist.

Help!

Are they all mp3's? you should be able to drag & drop them to your mac.
WMA's will need converting (itunes does that for you, or should do)

I don't have any WMA's - I've spent a decade avoiding them! They're all MP3's...all over 128kb/s, but clearly some MP3's are more MP3 than others!

If you are using a SMB share, it could be a problem transferring the data over the network. Networks are generally reliable, but it can sometimes start dropping packets...

Try copying the files manually, then importing them...

They don't have any unusual characters in the file name, do they? I believe a : may be a problem, as are file beginning with a full stop, as OS X treats them as invisible files. I expect you already know that, but just wanted to check! Also, doesn't OS X have a limit to the length of file names of (I think, possibly) 27 characters. Maybe the problem files are longer?

You could have better luck if you try renaming the problem files, as long as the ID3 tags are correct with the artist/track details, then it shouldn't matter what the actual file names are called, so you could rename them I think.

The file names are nothing out of the ordinary and I restrict the symbols to "-", so, it's a little strange. Oh well, looks like I'll be digging the CD's out.

File names can be essays in length, so that’s not a problem. The : character is sued in Finder as a separator for paths:
Macintosh HD:Users:username:Desktop:file.extension

The / character is also used as a delimiter for paths, which is laid down by the UNIX underpinnings (referred to as POSIX files in AppleScript):
/Users/username/Desktop/file.extension

So if the files have these in them, then this may be the problem.

This thread may help with the file problems - some mp3 formats may need massaging.

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=92743

The advice seems to be to use doubletwist to rebuild them. However, it could be that the files are not really mp3 files, but other formats with the .mp3 extension erroneously applied.

EDIT:
This thread on Apple’s support may be of interest:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 8&tstart=0

It gets more interesting - it imports the first track of some albums...gets bored and then moves onto the next!

It does sound like either a rights problem or a network timeout...

Or it doesn’t like the music and is trying to find something better

Have you tried copying the files from your old machine to the Mac’s HD and then dragging/dropping them into iTunes?

I've copied them all "in tact" to my Music folder and then imported them into itunes...from the same drive...it still skips them.

What happens if you drag one of the skipped files to iTunes? Does it ignore it, or does it import it?

Ignores them!

If you right click on one and choose QuickTime to open it, does it play?

I suspect that there is an “atom” of data in the MP3s which are causing the iTunes to skip them. You may have to get a track thta does work and a track that doesn’t and compare the meta data.