Crippled Tiger, Would Upgrading to Leopard Help?

[Mass. Wine Guy]

I did something pretty dumb. I'm not sure exactly what I trashed, but in an effort to speed my computer up a bit and get rid of files I have not used for years, I trashed some items from my system library.

I have a non-Intel iMac running 10.4.11.

The most interesting and obvious sign that something is wrong is that the language in my browser URL window (I use Firefox) is now is meaningless symbols. Also, any preference boxes in Firefox display the same meaningless junk.

I can't open Eudora because I get an error message saying there is insufficient memory, which has never happened before (I have 2 GB of RAM). And when I reboot, I get a dialogue box saying something about a run time error, giving me a choice of reporting it or quiting. Quiting gets me at least to a somewhat normal looking desktop., but every icon on my desktop is unmoveable and can't be opened. My hard drive icon does not appear on the desktop.

Is there any way to fix this? Since it appears to be a faulty OS, would upgrading to Leopard help?

Thank you very much.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

In a nutshell, it sounds like you need to reinstall Mac OS X. You can do this without losing too many of your settings and applications by performing an "Archive & Install" procedure.

You can do this with your original Tiger disks, or, as you said, upgrade to Leopard. It doesn't matter -- either one will get you a working OS X install again. It's just a matter of personal preference whether you're ready to upgrade to Leopard now or not.