iTunes library & playlists problem

Hi,

I will try to keep this short but I obviously need to mention as much info as possible; I'm in a bit of a state about this and have trawled the internet for a definitive answer...I haven't found one so if anyone replies hopefully it will also help others.

I have a G4 Mac with 10.5.8 OSx Leopard (I can't upgrade as it is non intel based). Now, my Mac froze and I lost Finder and so did a archive and reinstall. Everything is back to normal except for one thing....my iTunes playlists as they were. This is over 40,000 songs painstakingly created into hundreds of playlists over the years and it just isn't possible to create all the playlists from scratch all over again! Life is far too short!

I read all the guides about how to get your playlists back from the xml document but I need to know something before I do this. I don't have a lot of room on my Mac and so loading it into iTunes all over again will double the memory used won't it? Also, I had my playlists saved in two different locations, will all this copy over correctly with playlists and all that jazz if I do this?

Please can someone run through the process for someone who isn't really a techie and doesn't want to lose it all through a silly mistake? I have located the xml file in my previous library and put it on my desktop, is it just a case of importing playlists within iTunes and then it all works? Am I going to have to delete a lot of other stuff to make room for all of this all over again? I presume once it has copied everything over I delete the original and have a new library with the playlists.

Sooooo sorry for waffling on, if anyone can help I would be very grateful and indeed.
Many, many thanks...please help!

...also

I should add, I'm not a naughty girl, all of this music has been painstakingly bought on CD, converted from vinyl, cassettes, MD or downloaded from iTunes/Amazon.

I'm at my wits end I really am!

Thanks again
x