Itunes blew away all my songs on my computer!!!!!!!

Hello,
I recently reformated my system to start fresh. Before reformatting, I had Itunes installed and had about 10 gigs worth of songs on it. Before formatting, I backed up my documents folder which had all my music in the my music folder along with the itunes xml file and everything else that goes with it.
I reinstalled XP, installed my usual software then restored the backup of my documents. After the restore all my music files were there as expected. I had not installed itunes yet. Tonite, I decided I needed to put itunes back on so I could add some new music to my ipod. I download Itunes, install it and follow the prompts. At some point during the isntall process, it looked like it was importing all the songs back into the itunes library. I come back a bit later and start itunes and lo and behold all my songs are GONE. What the ****. What happened, why would it blow away all my music files? My external drive on which I had the back up of my documents is at work and am hoping I didnt blow it away. I'm hoping I can recover the music when I get to work in the morning. But this really bums me out.
Can someone explain what I could have done wrong here?
thanks
Yann
dell m70 laptop Windows XP Pro

Within iTunes you didn't see any songs but are they on the drive? If so have you tried adding them again? Sometimes the import during new install has made mistakes with the adding to library.

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