Need help restoring iphoto and iphoto library

Hi, I have been trying for over a year to restore my iphoto library which was lost when my hard drive died. Since I often go months between attempts, I kind of forget what we have already tried. I think we have tried rebuilding it as suggested in other posts. When we have done this, I think we have ended up with about 6 copies because when we search in spotlight, it says we have 19,196 jpgs!
When the hard drive died we had about 3000 photos. I believe all of them are still there in the mom and dad user, and they seem to be undistorted-yeah! However, when I click on the iphoto icon, I only get the task bar, no window opens up, and almost all the options are gray.
So basically, if I want to find a photo, I have to go through a long path, locate the thumbnail, drag it to the desktop and then I can use it.
I have read many of the similar posts, but I was still unsure what to try first in my situation. I imagine I need to get rid of about 16,000 copies of my original photos before I do anything else.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to make a family album, and I really need those photos!
Thank you all in advance. This is a wonderfully suportive community.
I don't know what version of iphoto I am running (or was running?), but I think it is an older one, since my g4 is several years old, and I don't think I ever purchased ilife. If someone can tell me how to check, I will provide the info.

Hi, thanks again for your reply.
I looked through some of the jpgs from spotlight, and I found at least 1000 that weren't photos, just some weird random stuff I didn't recognize.
Yes, the rebuild did work for awhile, but then it was gone again. It doesn't seem like it lasted very long. Also, I had the same problems others described with all the albums lost, and it seems like there were some photos I thought were lost as well. Like I said, I go months between my attempts to do this because it is so time consuming, so that is why I can't remember all the details.
Anyway, I thought that when I had it restored for a short time that I had backed up my photos, but now I can't find the disks, so maybe I never got around to it. You can bet I will be doing it this time!
For the sake of my book I am trying to get done for Christmas, would it be bad to just search through my jpgs, make a folder of some of them on the desktop, and then import them to shutterfly?
Also, I am wondering if buying the new ilife w/iphoto 8 would be a good idea right now or if it would just make a bigger mess of things? Would it have any way to search for my photos?
Sorry for all the questions. Hopefully if there is a solution, I will be able to get there soon.

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