HD failure.  Want to restore iTunes library from backup

The hard drive containing my music died. Fortunately, I have a (manual) backup of all the songs/artists on another hard drive. I also have a backup of the iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Library files.
I moved the xml and library files to my Music folder. I attached the backup hard drive and changed the location of my library in iTunes preferences to look for my songs there. I hit Consolidate. All the songs show up in the library, but a load of them have the dreaded exclamation point and have no link.
I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Thanks so much for any help!

That setting in Prefs tells iTunes where to put music when you import...not where to find your library. Try launching iTunes while holding down the option key, then tell it where to find the library.

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