Problems with browsers not working

I'm using a mac mini with v.10.3.9 (I do not have $ to upgrade right now). I lived away from it for a few years and returned to find that icons in the application menu (dashboard?) had disappeared. Recently browsers haven't been working right. I have multiple versions of firefox and have to go through and find a 2.0 to work, with the others the icon just appears and it either disappears or does nothing. I just tried upgrading Safari and now the icon does nothing when its clicked. I downloaded Camino and Opera tonight and the icons do nothing. What could be wrong? I also noticed that plugging live instruments in and recording on Garageband no longer works since I've been using this computer again. Its my parents and I don't think either of them would have done anything that would cause this (can't even figure out what would cause this? but i don't they would delete random things). I have like 4gigs left so space isn't an issue. Thanks in advance!

As u have been away from it for years then one assumes that there is no reason why u cannot do a fresh install of OS off the instal disk then download and install 10.3.9 Combo Updater for the latest changes and start again from new.

gndntrdfnbd said:

I downloaded Camino and Opera tonight and the icons do nothing.

Click to expand...

If the above proposed solution did not work, how about some more information... What are the exact names of the Camino and Opera icons that do not respond as you expect?

We're working blind here by necessity. Sometimes the words people use to describe things do not connect to the same actions imagined by the reader. So, we have to know we're talking apples to apples. (so to speak)

I think I'll just reinstall as soon as I find the disks. The Opera icon is opera.app (v10.0) and the Camino is camino.app (1.6.9). I download them, then follow the installation instructions. I had dragged both to the dock and they disappeared after another startup, but now Opera works on another osx user login (which is weird since I didn't install it there - don't know how that works- good since I couldn't get any versions of either Safari or Firefox to work on it). Thanks again!