My Itunes Library is gone

Short Version:
all my files are in the itunes media folder on my external harddrive, and they were all working fine yesterday, i checked the locations of several of them, and they all were in the H drive. I open my itunes today. and everything is gone. i spent several days putting together and playlist and its gone.
Long Version:
Our computer wasnt allowing us to log in. So we called dell and they had us reinstall windows xp the long way, and install all the drivers individually. then then left it like that and told us to beat it after having paid them some 200 dollars for the fix. We still had all the files but most of our program files are now corrupt. (i believe we reinstalled itunes however, but im not sure) I've been manually fixing this. But itunes has been a problem. I dragged my music folder in wrong, and i had to go in and fix all the duplicates myself. It took me about a month to get it perfect- better than it was before. Then one day my fathers library disappeared and all his music files were completely gone. (we have several users that each itunes folder is under). I had consolidated my library onto my external hard drive. They were all working and playing through itunes from my external hard drive yesterday. When i opened itunes today, my library was completely blank, as if i opened itunes for the first time on a new computer. LUCKILY, my files are all consolidated still in the h drive, and my entire itunes folder is there. i just imported the itunes folder to itunes and it seems to be working ok, but all my podcasts are screwed, and two playlists that i spent countless hours creating is now gone. what the **** is going on.
"itunes library.itl.backup" is sitting in my itunes folder... but the problem is idk if this file will be overridden after i close itunes now, because i've already imported that folder.. is there a way i can get my playlists back by doing something with that file??
Message was edited by: bejay20x

yeah.
Message was edited by: bejay20x

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