problems with an ibook

I had recently bought an iBook clamshell and it came in the mail yesterday, the ebay seller had included a bunch of cool stuff with it, it runs os 9 and osx 10.4
Today i turned it off and unlatched the keyboard, then took out the airport card, just to give it a look over, i hooked everything back up and booted into 10.4
Now all the extra stuff is gone (exept the extra applications that had been installed such as office) and my preferences have been reset, i tried searching for the files but nothing came up
I booted into os 9 and everything remained the same as before. So what happened to osx? why did it partially reset itself?? I want the files back..

hikarithevampy said:

...i hooked everything back up and booted into 10.4
Now all the extra stuff is gone (exept the extra applications that had been installed such as office) and my preferences have been reset, i tried searching for the files but nothing came up
I booted into os 9 and everything remained the same as before. So what happened to osx? why did it partially reset itself?? I want the files back..

Click to expand...

Two things.

1. This computer is probably setup to dual-boot (OS 9 or OS X). I think that you need to hold down the "option" button during reboot to choose which to boot into.
2. Regarding the preferences. The preference settings are most likely being lost because the ibook's battery (and maybe the PRAM battery if it has one) are dead. If there's no operational battery...when the computer is unplugged from the electricity...the prefernce settings are lost.

- Nick