iTunes can't find songs that are there in my library !!!

[dpocius]

My itunes library is on an external hard drive. For whatever reason- perhaps from past moves of my library from different drives - itunes suddenly can't find lots of tracks even though they are in my itunes library. I have to suddenly tell itunes where tracks are located. Even on the same album, itunes isn't smart enough to realize that the next song on the album is in the same folder. This started to become an issue out of no where when I haven't made any changes to anything lately, and when everything has been kosher even just hours ago. Again, this is not for all my tracks, but a lot of them.

I suspect this is because of the location of the file as provided in the .xml file. As I look at it, I notice that some files are "located" in an older hard drive that is no longer living even though itunes successfully copied all my tracks to my latest drive. Again, not sure why it wasn't an issue before and suddenly it is, but I digress.

I am thinking I can "find and replace" the old location with the new location within the .xml file. After trying different things and programs, I have not gotten any closer to executing the find and replace or finding some other solution.

Any help from anyone- either on executing the find and replace (keeping in mind that while I am a bit computer savvy, I am not programming savvy) or on somehow making itunes tighten up and find the files that it had previously organized and copied to my itunes library (I let itunes copy and organize my files, and it had previously and successfully copied all music to my latest external hard drive and itunes music folder).

Thanks...