How do I unscramble PC-to-iPhoto photo transfer?

Well, I was so proud of my non-techie self for figuring out how to transfer about 9,000 photos from my old PC to my new MacBook until I viewed the results. I was led to believe that iPhoto would preserve my PC's folder/subfolder structure. However, the transfer has resulted in some sort of chronological mishmash bearing only superficial resemblance to the logical PC structure. In addition, there seems to be lots of duplication of photos and lots of folders mysteriously designated "101MSDCF." What did I do wrong? And how do I fix it?

Dump that Library and start over.
If you want to preserve your Folder structure you can - but that's really a file management hierarchy. iPhoto is about Photo Management, and tend to use Photo metadata to organise rather than File data. Hence Events and Albums rather than Files and Folders.
To preserve your Folder structure you replace Folders with Albums.
So, starting at the bottom of your Folder hierarchy drag a folder of images to the Album heading on the iPhoto Window. That will import the images and create an Album of the same name. You can create the enclosing folder in iPhoto (File -> New Folder) and drag the album to that. Repeat until finished.
If your folder structure is based on date then Events and Smart Albums are more efficient. If you're using a thematic structure, then keywords will be more flexible.
In addition, there seems to be lots of duplication of photos and lots of folders mysteriously designated "101MSDCF."
These are very likely caused by Invisible Folders created in your filing system by whatever app you used on Windows. They likely contain thumbnails. Have a read of this thread
can Iphoto be used with the photos already stored on my current ext hard drive?
towards the end you'll see this poster had as similar problem. We fixed by using Pathfinder to make the invisible visible and then they could be deleted.

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