ITunes doesn't find my music files on external drive anymore

I have some 15.000 music files on an external hard drive. I added them to my iTunes library and added also a lot of extra info (titles, genres, albums covers, etc.).
After a great New Year's Party, where several people "played" with my iTunes playlists, for some reason iTunes doesn't sees / recognises the music files on the external hard drive anymore.
What can I do? I don't want to import the music files all over again. Otherwise I loose all the info I added in the past year. And it is undoable to find the music files one-by-one on the external drive. That would take months.
Who can help?

Select one track in your library that is currently missing in action. Press CTRL-I to Get Info then look at the Where: entry on the Summary tab. You should get something along the lines of:
file://localhost/<path 1>/<Artist>/<Album>/## <Name>.<ext>
e.g. file://localhost/D:/iTunes/iTunes Music/Arcade Fire/Funeral/01 Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).mp3
The true path will be something else of the form:
<path 2>\<Artist>\<Album>\## Name.<ext>
e.g. D:\iTunes\iTunes Music\Music\Arcade Fire\Funeral\01 Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).mp3
Comparing the two paths should reveal what needs to be done to put music back where iTunes "expects" to find it. The examples show the different default locations before and after the upgrade to iTunes Media Organisation. I've seen problems before with the way iTunes manages this upgrade so that it occasionally reorganizes the files but then carries on looking for them in the old location. It is also surprising how easy it is sometimes to accidentally move a folder without noticing. Alternatively Windows may simply have switched the drive letter for your external drive. Windows Media Player is more resilient in these circumstances.
If you can give the two locations for a sample file I can probably suggest what will need doing to put things right.
tt2

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