Itunes won't let me add files from external hard drive

I've been having this problem with my external hard drive and I don't know if it's my computer or iTunes, but I would appreciate any help.
Recently, for some reason, all my songs went missing on iTunes and iTunes would freeze a lot. I reinstalled iTunes and now it's working fine. The problem is, I store my music on an external hard drive and I'm trying to add my files back by going to "Add Folder to Library", but it works every time I do it.
At first, I thought it was freezing because my drive is so big, so I did it folder by folder (organized by artists) and it will work fine for small folders, but if it's a folder with like more than one album, iTunes will crash. At first, I thought something was wrong with one of the music files, but that's not it because it happens with any large folder.
I used to use iTunes Updater, which would update all your songs for you, but now that program doesn't work with the latest version of iTunes. Thanks for any help.

This might be worth a shot - basically seeing if Vista permissions could be the culprit.
Give yourself FULL control and ownership of the exHD, let's call it M:
How to Take Ownership and Grant Permissions in Windows Vista
Take control of the top level folder and ALL subfolders.
Try creating a new blank ITL file on M: by pressing *and holding* the shift key while itunes starts. See if you can add everything again.

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