I have had a world of trouble tonight with my Mac. I wanted to archive and reinstall to restore some applications and fix some issues, but I accidentally put in my Panther install CD. The installation was successful, but when I started up my Mac my password wasn't recognized; I reset it, but that was only the start of my problems. Applications wouldn't launch, and I hadn't been given a "new" System Folder; rather, my custom files had been split between the new system and the "Previous Systems" folder created by the Archive and Install. I consolidated the custom files and tried permissions repair. I then tried to reinstall again, thinking the installation had been botched and stupidly (still kicking myself) neglecting to check the software version and thus not realizing I was using the Panther CD until after another reinstallation failed to solve the issues. So I got the Tiger Install DVD and ran the upgrade, but got errors. I'd had this issue before, so after trying again with the Archive and Install option on the Tiger DVD, I ran DiskWarrior. I'd had to download and burn an upgrade to my Panther DW, but the computer couldn't read the CD. I whipped out my Panther DW and tried that, just for the heck of it, but of course I got the "Newer version of Mac OS X installed; can't do it" type of error message.
So, I had an iMac G4 with OS X 10.4.10 working with only a few problems; now I have an iMac G4 with a mix of Panther and Tiger files and a scrambled disk directory that DW can't fix. Even though most of my stuff is backed up, I really don't want to erase and install. Please, please help! Any and all advice will be much appreciated.
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