Some tracks won't play in iTunes anymore

I have a number of .mp3 files that iTunes used to play, but now no longer will. Nothing happens when I double click on them or press play. Most of my other tracks play fine.
When I "get info" about the problem tracks within iTunes, and I click on Summary, I notice that the Format, Channels, ID3 Tag, and Encoded With fields are no longer present. The file type is still MPEG, and when I locate the files through the finder and get info, they are .mp3 files with an .mp3 extension.
I've read some discussion of this problem on these boards, and some have suggested that the problem occurs when one tries to play the files through QuickTime. This isn't my case. (Quicktime says "the movie could not be opened.") But I have noticed that the problem tracks do have in common album titles in which I have included a colon. I allow iTunes to organize my files, and usually--and even in the case of these problem files--an underscore replaces the colon when iTunes creates the album folder in my Music folder. I bring this up only to suggest that one common denominator for the problem files is the presence of a colon in the album name for the iTunes tag, although the presence of a colon is not a guarantee that the file will not play.
I have tried copying a trouble file to the desktop, deleting the file from the library and from the Music folder (although I haven't emptied the trash) and then trying to restore the copy to my iTunes library. iTunes won't accept the file.
Any ideas? What a crazy problem!
MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Unfortunately, you are not alone with this. However, I have yet to come across a solution to the problem after many hours trawling these discussion boards and the net.
I have exactly the same symptoms. But my common denominator is ‘missing Album Artwork’. Although the album has Artwork, all the tracks that have ceased playing and are being ignored by iTunes, have lost their Artwork.
This would suggest a problem with the ID3 tags i.e that they have become corrupted. Of course, the recent update from iTunes 6 to 7 which introduced the ‘Coverflow’ technology has coincided with the start of my problem. A quick glance at the ‘last played’ date of the problem tracks confirm that the corruption of the ID3 tag is DEFINETLY post iTunes7.
I have tried editing the metadata with an ID3 tag editor, and can change everything except the Artwork field. If anyone has found a way to restore a track after the same problem, please post…many thanks.

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