Kernel Panic

[xxalphamalexx]

I have a question.... The story starts here....
I was on the internet checking my grades and safari began to act up and the loading wheel came on the screen so i went to force quit. As i clicked the apple icon again i received a loading wheel and after a couple minutes i became impatient and just held in teh power button to restart. I start my computer back up and it gave me the "please restart your computer" message. So i did so many times. After becoming very discouraged i went back to basic mac trouble shooting and i put in my installation disc (i had leopard but i used the Tiger disc because i couldn't find my leopard disc....found out later my sister had it). I held option "c" and got it to read the disc. It asked me if i wanted to create a folder with previous files and everytime i would click this an error would occur. Chose to go without it. I finished the install and now all the files are gone from my computer. Am i Fucked??!?!?! or if i install leopard will they come back? or is there any way to get the files back?

 

[Giaguara]

Using the install disc of 10.4 on a 10.5 system is generally not a good idea.

If you would have selected "archive and install" in that case your previous system should be in a folder called "previous system folder" or something similar, containing everything you had on your previous system. As you didn't select that, your files are gone. Installing the 10.5 system back won't magically create the files you had added to the system past the basic system installation.

Just install 10.5 back, and use your Time Machine or other fully configured and up to date backup strategy to restore the files you need back from your system before the panics started.