ITunes library gone bad; best way to rebuild and keep playlists?

As I outlines several months ago, iTunes has been generating hundreds of nonsensical files that have the same name as my music/song files, but end in .jpg or .png or .html, etc. I described the problem here, but have gotten no responses: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1088949&tstart=0
At this point, I am searching for the best way to "start fresh" on a new external drive with hopes that the problem is coming from the external that I am now using, and I would like to know your suggestions. I have approx. 170GB of media files, mostly music, and hope that I can keep my playlists intact. I have a backup of all my media files that I have scoured clean of all the phantom .jpg and .png files, and a backup of my library and .xml files.
My best guess is to uninstall iTunes, reinstall iTunes, then drag the "clean" backup of all my media files on to iTunes (with "keep iTunes organized" and "copy files" preferences checked), then import the .xml and library files. Don't know if this will work or not, especially for preserving the playlists/organization I have created over the past few years to keep 170GB of music organized.
Do you have a better solution? Am I forgetting some crucial step?

Another thought. Might this work?
1. Backup my iPhone to my MacBook (instead of iCloud)
2. Sync my iPhone with my new iTunes library (it would now be associated with the MacBook)
3. Restore my iPhone from the backup in step 1 (would this re-associate my phone with the old computer, or would it stay with the MacBook?)
4. Do the restore a second time (to put the apps back in their proper order/arrangement)
5. Sync my iPhone with the music library on the MacBook
6. Set up the iPhone to backup to iCloud again, as it was originally
I don't want to just try it and lose my data. Is this a viable option?

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tt2

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tt2

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This should help you out. I copied this from another discussion a while back. Here is the original discussion link.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11527071#11527071
This is what is in the discussion. It really doesn't get any easier than this.
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ITunes library gone bad; best way to rebuild and keep playlists?

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