Iphoto is showing most of my thumbnails as black

ok im on imac running 10.7.3 using iphoto 11 (9.2.1) with a 1Tb HD
My iphoto library is saved on my imac HD, and i do back up onto my external 1Tb HD using Time machine. However i can not go back and rebuild from that as i had a problem and i had to delete all saved backups to free up space on it as it stopped saving my backups. I am now desperately trying to free up space to allow the back ups to restart!!! As i can not afford another larger HD.
However i do have 1 back up of my entire 'pictures' folder from my HD, to an external HD which is 239Gb in size.
I opened up iphotos 3 days ago and for seemingly no reason - many of my thumbnails are showing up as black, Also the thumbnails of events are showing up black, when i lcick on them the actual photo is still there, so i am assuming its a thumbnails issue.
I have tried rebuilding the thumbnails and indeed the whole library, to no avail. i have reset permissions also no help it seems.
the more upto date thumbnails are fine it seems to be older thumbnails. which appear as above, as i say when i click them the actual photos appear no problem,
So i have tried rebuilding entire library - doesnt work,
have tried rebuilding just the thumbnails - as soon as i do this it then begins to try to find the thumbnails and rebuild
i then get this message
I click cancel (as it just wont find the photo if i try to), but then another alert comes up and another etc etc etc, after 5 hours the progress wasnt even visible after 2 days it was just visible as a tiny blue progress bar!!!!!!!!
So i am now at a loss, i have tried rebuilding via library manager, but for some reason this just crashes!!!!!!
as you can see i have 26,000 photos as i do this for a living.
If anyone has any ideas on how i can restore my thumbnails would be greatly appreciated.
thank you in advance
Kris Watson
x

Hi Terence,
i was wondering if you might be able to offer me any more advice on my options for my iphoto library.
I have tried rebuilding however it takes 3-4 days just to doa small percentage of the entire library - meanwhile i cant use my mac, as im worried it will crash and ill have to start all over again.
All the actual photos are there, just not the thumbnails!!!!!!!!!!
1. Could i start a new library from a back up??? And would i need to delete the exsisting one or do i just drag the iphotos folder into the main window?
2. Could i start a new library from just dragging the the photos, or iphoto folder?? which one should i drag across to start a new library?
Any other ideas would be very helpful.
thank you

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this is from the last error report (step 5 of my 22Jan12 1142 post above):
Process:
iPhoto [2588]
Path:
/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/MacOS/iPhoto
Identifier:
com.apple.iPhoto
Version:
9.2.1 (9.2.1)
Build Info:
iPhotoProject-628000000000000~3
Code Type:
X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [2471]
Date/Time:
2012-01-22 11:11:23.578 +1300
OS Version:
Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6
Sleep/Wake UUID: A5D90A7D-4923-4807-925C-7572A3FDC25F
Interval Since Last Report:
225 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:
1
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 3 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   1
Anonymous UUID:
9111BA25-4BC3-453F-8171-C05AFE66124B
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000058723f2f
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Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
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0x94a22aba CGImagePluginReadRawXMPProps + 60
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3   com.apple.ImageIO.framework
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17 com.apple.HIToolbox
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18 com.apple.HIToolbox
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0x92e8d595 _DPSNextEvent + 847
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21 com.apple.AppKit
0x92e4f1f3 -[NSApplication run] + 821
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0x00010a29 0x1000 + 64041

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Details please
What version of iPhoto and of the OS?
i tried to rebuild my files from folders that had the pics in them.
Exactly what did you do and how did you do it? this ay be the cause of your issue but without details we can n=ony guess
my iphoto only shows only shows thumb size pics when I try to open them,
where do you see htis? In the iPhoto window? what does "try to pen them" exactly mean?
originally all the photos had a large delta with a question mark.
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also I can't back up the library file because its not there.
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I also lost my Idvd file, only have broken chain showing.
This would be better addressed in the iDVD forum - but again unlesss yu share detailed information no one can assist
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