ITunes library not available but library files are still stored on computer

My iTunes has been acting up since day one when it claimed that i was using a different computer after an update but now it wont let me access my iTunes library. Nothing is there - no purchased history, no music library, nothing.
I'm logged in using my usual account details and up to the other day everything was fine - i watched a film on iTunes, turned off my PC and then nothing was there anymore.
I checked my documents folder and all the files are still in there, in fact i can double click on them and they independently load up iTunes and then run but still arent listed in my library. I put another cd on today, rebooted the PC and the cd isn't listed either but is still in the correct folder on the hard drive.
Am i doing something really stupid or is this another quirk???

Hm ... I guess I can't edit the post above. Anyway, I seem to have solved it by ...
Quitting iTunes.
Going into Home / Music / iTunes, and renaming the file "iTunes Library.itl" to "iTunes Library (corrupt).itl".
Entering Time Machine, and restoring the "iTunes Library.itl" file from a few days ago. I went back two days, which seemed far enough back to be "before" the problem but not far enough back to have trouble with recent acquisitions.
Re-opening iTunes - and everything seemed to be back in order.
So that's fine for now. We'll see if the solution is stable.
Very, very tentative assignment of blame: I believe iTunes crashed earlier today after I'd synced photos from my iPhone to iPhoto, and then iTunes crashed while iPhoto was closing (and taking its sweet time doing so). If that was indeed the case, that's at least the second time in the past couple of months that trying to sync iPhone photos to iPhoto has caused me significant problems. (The last time led to 80% of my iPhone suddenly being occupied by "Other", and a full restore of the darn thing.)

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