"original file could not be found" message for all music files in library

So, after spending all day trying to figure out how to recover my library of music after this stupid upgrade (like so many other people, I see) I now not only am missing a lot of the newer music I purchased, but now an "!" appears in front of all my songs and says that the original file can not be found. I tried to manually locate it but this not only sounds like a nightmare of a task, I could not even locate anywhere the specific song I had happened to select.
I neither understand what this message really means nor do I have any idea where to even start to fix it.
Please...any suggestions will be helpful!

I did a restore on an ipod (due to syncing problems w/stupid 7.7 upgrade) and it deleted all but 24 songs on my itunes library. It lists all the songs but like the original poster, it has an '!' in front of the title, says the 'original could not be found' and I cannot locate the files anywhere on my computer.
I've asked this question about 5 times now -- why would doing a restore on an ipod delete songs from my itunes library? How does this happen? And more importantly, WHEN IS APPLE GOING TO FIX THIS 7.7 PROBLEM WE ARE ALL HAVING???

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