ITunes 7.1.1 deletes music files on hard drive

After updating iTunes to 7.1.1, I discovered that my playlist for "alternative" music had dissappeared. OK, no problem, the music files must still be in "music/itunes". Searched through this folder, but ALL the "alternative" music files were gone from the hard drive - all the music burned from CDs, even those purchased from iTunes! Used "find" in various ways, no luck. They are truly deleted.
After hours and hours of reinstalling all the "alternative" music from backups, all was back as before. I shut my Mac down for the night. The next day I opened iTunes and the "alternative" playlist was gone again - and the music I had put back onto my hard drive had been erased again!
I've tried starting iTunes from an old library - the playlists come back, but the music is not, just shows question marks. I've even done a virus check of the whole HD.
As any ideas as to why this is happening, and what to do?
Now I'm worried that other playlists, and their actual music files will be unpredictably wiped.
Has this happened to anyone else's "Alternative" music files and/or playlists?
I can't believe my music files have been erased off my hard drive - twice!
Hard to trust iTunes now.
G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Thanks for the reply, it's appreciated.
I usually turn off the computer each night. After updating to 7.1.1, just the "alternative" playlist and music files were gone from my HD. I re-installed the music files from a backup HD.
To test things, I quit iTunes and then opened it again and looked in the music file on the HD, a number of times. The replaced music was still there.
The next morning, I turned on the computer [Of course, I know that an off computer can do nothing ]. When it came time to open iTunes, again the music files were gone. I didn't check to see if the files were there before I opened iTunes, unfortunately.
I did use Norton, but only AFTER I discovered the files were gone ...
At the mo' I'm trying to recreate the problem to see if I can further narrow it down. Putting just one song into the Alternatives playlist, shutting down, starting up, etc. See if it's there. Repairing permissions with Disk Utility, etc etc.
Again, thanks for trying to help!

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