Missing songs in iTunes; can't retrieve

30 GB video iPod, running latest iTunes. Several months ago my computer crashed. When I rebooted, all my songs were missing from iTunes. Not wanting to loose all my songs, I set my iPod to manual update.
I've tried everything to restore my songs to iTues. Out of 990 songs, I've been able to restore about 300 adding them individually - for instance dragging from the iTunes music folder. But I can't do it wholesale. When I try adding the iTunes folder from the File menu iTunes bombs - every time.
I've resorted to the iPod utility programs to legally get my songs back into iTunes. This process also causes iTunes to crash after a few minutes of trying to import.
I know I'm not alone, since I've heard that lost songs in iTunes is one of the known glitches. So I'm surprised not to be able to find anything here about it.

What about this -- take out anything that's not a file folder or an audio file. Take out all indexes, xml documents, etc (keep a backup). All we want is folders and music. The unwanted junk should be in the uppermost level, not buried too deeply in subfolders. Then try to import from the top again. Maybe iTunes is taking a shortcut and sees the indexes it created before. Get rid of the indexes and you force it to do its job.
It's just a guess, but worth a try I figure.

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