"Force" iTunes to find all music on a computer?

When iTunes is initially setup, it asks if you would like it to find and import all music on your computer. Is there a way to have iTunes find all music on your computer after the setup is complete?
The problem we're having is that music is scattered all over the place, and it would be nice to just have iTunes look for it all rather than do it ourselves. Of course, we declined the initial offer for iTunes to find all music.
Any thoughts?

You can reset the query by deleting the two iTunes' preferences files, both named "iTunes.pref" and tucked away in your "Documents & Settings\username" area. If you invested time in creating playlists & rankings, then you should make a copy of the ITL & XML files from "My Music\iTunes" before starting the process. I'm not quite sure of the results of resetting the preference files with existing playlist data which is stored in another file.
If you don't like the results, restore the ITL & XML files to their original location to restore your library to its previous appearance.

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