ITunes 7 - 4 problems I've encountered. Please help!

Question

First, I am not getting any error messages. These are just problems I have noticed.
1.) When I try to "Add folder to Library", it only adds 1 song on the first try, no matter how many new music files I have in the folder that are not already in the library. All are .mp3 btw. I could only add new files earlier, by reloading iTunes, and now at this point, it does not even work. The only other way is for me to manually enter each file individually, using the "Add File to Library" option. But that is too tedious with the amount of files I want to add. This is first and foremost the main thing I want fixed.
2.) When I do attempt to add a folder to library, it starts going through the "Processing Album Artwork" process. Why? Don't know. It only did this one time with iTunes 6, and never again.
3.) When I put a music CD in my drive, it shows up on iTunes, but none of the album info is retrieved. I've tried multiple CDs, and none work. And some of these are albums I ripped using iTunes 6, and the album info was retrieved off of that. Now before anyone asks, iTunes appears to be uplinking to get the album info. No luck.
4.) Lastly, when I have a CD in, there is no import button for ripping the music anymore. It's just non existent.
One last thing, is it possible to retrograde back to iTunes 6? All these problems are really putting me off.

Answer 1

add this 3: iPod doesn't show artwork any more, when it is "optimized" by itunes 7 (6 works well, for 2 ipods)
Error -50 using old (itunes 6) library (trying to "optimize" artwork), had to create a new one on itunes 7.
Half of the ipods (statistics based on both mine and my brother's ipod) didn't upgrade to 1.2, because of the 1417 error (no, the unplug-plug trick didn't work)
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