Some songs listed in my iTunes Library won't play

I'm running iTunes 8.0.2.20 on Windows XP SP3.
My iTunes library is set to be located in the default place, i.e.
C:\Documents and Settings\<my user name>\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music
It's fairly large (11833 songs to date).
I regularly sync my 160GB iPod classic with it.
Recently I have been finding that various songs listed in my iTunes library will not play - if I click to play them, nothing happens.
If I right-click on them (Get Info) and follow the listed path to where they are in my library, I go use Windows Explorer to access the underlying MP3 in a different application (e.g. WinAmp) and the MP3s do seem to be present and correct and play fine in WinAmp.
So far all the songs this has happened with have been ones which were ripped off my CDs to MP3 before I got the iPod, and subsequently imported into iTunes.
Any suggestions as to what is going on and how to repair it?
Obviously, I can manually delete the songs that won't play from iTunes, then re-import them all over again from the original CD..... but this is a bit time-consuming (especially where I have customized the metadata and artwork beyond what is in the Gracenote® database)....and with over 10 thousand songs in my library, there's no way to test them all easily to see which ones work and which don't.
Is my library getting corrupted in some way?
Is there a way to rebuild it somehow? (without losing my customized metadata and artwork?)

Yes, actually lots of folks. iTunes 8 has gotten really fussy about MP3 tags and won't play or even add them to the library if it doesn't care for their format. They may have played in previous versions, but won't now.
Use Mp3 Validator to fix any tag issues. It's a free DL. I've used it, and it works.
Just try it on one song and you'll believe!
Here is a good web article on it:
http://trevinchow.com/blog/tag/mp3-tag-validator/

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