Hi all, I have a tale of woe to share and I am hoping someone out there might be able to offer some hand-holding help so that I can fix my computer back to its bright and shiny workable state o that it once was.

Once upon a time I had a wonderful new ibook G4 computer bought circa 2002.

I used it for all sorts of useful things like getting through grad school, writing important papers, starting up a nonprofit, etc. It had a wonderful array of programs on it like Adobe Suite, MS Office for Macs, EndNote, etc.

It was a backpack laptop and drove across the country with me more than once.

Once, in the midst of a more recent move from Kentucky to Alaska, the logic board DIED en route.... that is to say - completely. Only white screen. I took it into the nearest MAC Store I could find which would be in Anchorage AK.

They took one look at it and confirmed deadness, suggested that they pull all my info off onto an external backup system and then send the computer back to Apple for fixings and resuscitation.

Lacking any other alternative, this is what I did.

Then I got it back a couple of months later, the computer booted up ONCE like fine, I attempted to pull files from backup onto hard drive and the next time I tried to boot up computer I get a small "Finder face" in the middle of my screen about the size of a thumbnail. And that's all. After subsequent phone calls back to the Mac store (at this point I am living in the boonies of AK far away from Store) I send it back to them to replace the hard drive.

They send me back same computer with entirely new hard drive, so basically I have a new little computer with same outer shell.

In the meantime in my personal life, I lived through the process of giving birth to a baby and a total life reorganiztion that that brings. So for the past 10 months I have only had small 10 minute snippets of time with which to try and tend to this problem and restore it at all.. So basically, I haven't' been able to do much of anything. But, I did start re-using the new computer to store photos (since I upped the amount of hard drive space that it had... )

Anyways

At 11 months (baby's age) I now find that I have more mental energy to expend towards finshing the writing of my thesis, and that means that I need to unravel this knot for once and for all and get the kinks smoothed out so that computer is in good working order once again with all my files etc.

My problem:
*I have the old backed up version of my system with IMPORTANT FILES and APPLICATIONS in a pretty coherent order, stuck on a hard drive, contained two users names (P* and T* for story purposes) P* being the User Admin
and a possible virus harbored on it (that jumps out and bites MS PC users - I caught it by running a virus scan of drive using my other MS PC)

*I have the new version of my system with IMPORTANT PHOTOS and a terrible filing system (eveyrthing sttored higglety pigglety) where the Mac Store designated a new user L* to be Admin with totally different settings...

What I want to do:
I want to restore the old settings and then save files from new version within old filing system.

What I have tried so far:
* to switch user admin on current new computer version to mirror old user admins
(from L* to P*)
* so now I have two users L* & P*

Result?
its not working. Does anyone have any step by step direction on how to
a) save the entire new system to back up version (so I can back up my photos I've taken int he last year and bring back the current working system entirely if I need it and other attempts fail)
b) check and get rid of virus on back up version
c) re-pull and open the old version up completely on my computer so that it looks like the way it was before it broke down (settings included)
d) pull new file photos into old version and save them.
e) create a new mirror back up process that happens easy and regularly that really includes the whole computer so that if by chaance my logic board ever dies again in this fashion I can open up my "own computer" on a different computer, find all my stuff and continue working as if it were usual until fixage occurs.

Any suggestions? Many Thanks for any thoughts you care to share to help me unravel this convoluted mess.