To restore my itunes library.  but no songs will play.  what next?    i

i had backed up iTunes to external hard drive since i had to do a clean install on my computer.  My os is windows vista.
I installed iTunes on my computer.
Then i copied the iTunes folder on the external hard drive to the music folder on my clean computer.
these are the steps i followed:  iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
i followed these steps for
Restoring your iTunes Library backup
When you need to restore your backed up iTunes Library from your external hard drive to your computer, follow these steps:
Quit iTunes.
Locate your external hard drive.
  Windows: In My Computer
Drag the iTunes folder (backed up earlier) from your external hard drive to whatever location you desire on your internal hard drive. It is recommended that you choose the default location for the iTunes folder, which is:
Windows Vista: \Users\username\My Music\
Open iTunes while holding down the Option key (Mac) or Shift key (Windows).
In the resulting dialog, click the Choose Library button.
Select the iTunes folder you just moved to the internal hard drive.
Click Choose (Mac OS X) or Open (Windows) and then choose the iTunes Library file inside .
After following these steps, iTunes will open and your iTunes Library will be restored.
to get my iTunes library in iTunes.
Well, my library IS  there with playlists.  But no songs will play.
Obviously i've missed a step or done something incorrectly.
please help.

Are the songs displayed with exclamation marks? The exclamation mark for missing files is shown if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place. Changing the path to the media folder won't fix the links to files you've moved by hand.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then say no when asked to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. I would suggest you untick Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Keep iTunes Media folder organized before you start so that things don't have to move around as they are repaired.
tt2

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