Help! iTunes deleted my library!!

Yesterday, I was trying to open iTunes, when it read the library and said that it was "damaged". It then proceeded to create a new blank library. This has happened before, and usually the libraries are not actually damaged, so what I usually did was delete the new library and rename the damaged library to match the new library. However, this time when I did it it reread the library and said it couldn't open it, which is strange because I opened iTunes up earlier that day and it worked perfectly. The only reason that iTunes was closed at this specific time was because I was restarted iTunes for lagging. I tried my method of replacing libraries again and then opened it. It REPLACED my library with an older library that was over a year old (last song played was on January of 2008), therefore I lost my playcounts and most of my music. I had over 50 gigs in my previous library, and this library has 19, not to mention some of the songs in it have already been removed previously and therefore registered as 'file cannot be found' (with the exclamation point next to the song). I'm trying to do a file recovery search right now, but other than restarting my library (which I do NOT want to do because I want to have my playcounts, most of my songs hitting over 100), what do you guys suggest?

Let's hope you recently upgrade itunes to v9!
When you do an itunes upgrade, it saves a copy of the current version's library in a folder named
Previous iTunes Libraries. Use these directions to get it back - even though the article title is about something different, it's the same steps you need.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1967
Maybe there will be a library file in there that is not over a year old!
In the future, you might want to make weekly backups of that ITL file. Especially after adding lots of music or edits, doing ratings or special playlists...I use Win Explorer to copy my ITL file to a USB memory stick.

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