Mac OS 10.4 reset itself

Hi,
I was using my PowerBook G4 today like I always do. I was downloading some new icons from the apple website and I was writing a paper for school. I was pasting some of these new icons onto folders, when my customize buttons on the Finder dissappeared. I thought the computer was just having a small problem, so I restarted it.
When I did that, the entire OS was changed. The dock was reset back to factory settings (except instead of the icons appearing, they were question marks). My iTunes library was erased, as was my iPhoto library (and all of my other applications were reset). My edits to the Finder (such as backgrounds) were set back to white, and edits inside of applications were undone (for instance, my bookmarks in Safari were reset back to factory settings).
What happened? And is there a way to recover the settings I had put into the computer? It didn't delete my MS Word and Excel files, but it seems to have deleted or reset everything else. I have had no problems with my computer before. Nothing like this has ever happened to it before. Thanks for your help in advance.
PowerBook G4 12.1 1.5 GHz 512 MB RAM   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Update:
After digging around more, I've found most of my files. My iTunes music is all there for instance. However, I have to reimport the files into iTunes to get them to play.
So, my question is now... what happened? Why did my computer reset itself, but not delete my files? And how do I keep this from happening again in the future?

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    I don't understand what you mean by
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