ITunes Playlist Dissappeared after iTunes Crashed! Help!!!

Question

Hello,
I had a disaster occur a few hours ago and am struggling and hoping to get it back quickly.
First, I have 160GBs of Music (including movies, 90gbs of music) and possibly hundreds of playlist. My iTunes crashed while creating another playlist and when I brought iTunes back up, all of my playlist, preferences as well as library appeared to be deleted.
The song files are still located on my computer and I have no problem adding them back to my library, however, it is my PLAYLIST that I will have a lot of problems recreating.
Has this happened to anyone else before and how did you get your playlist back? The reason this is so critical is that I have tons of opera in my library that typically consist of 40+ tracks that tend to not be numbered sequentially. You can see the problem this creates when many of these files are in foreign languages and are not divided into track numbers (hey, Mozart didn't have to compile his music into 74 minute CDs).
Any help would be much appreciated. The last backup I have with the .xml file was created in the beginning of October and for some reason the latest Previous Version/Shadow Copy is several months old.
Thanks again in advance!
Nate

Answer 1

If your iTunes Music Library.xml file is intact it may be possible to recereate your library using the following method:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451
If that doesn't work...
Have you upgraded to iTunes 8 recently? If so you should have a backup library in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder, in the iTunes folder.
The files include the reversed date when they were created.
If you have a reasonably recent backup you want to use, with ITunes closed, drag iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml out of the iTunes folder to the desktop. Then COPY the backup library into your iTunes folder and rename it iTunes Library.itl.
Message was edited by: polydorus