Panther Upgrade Problem

I upgraded my iMac G3 500 mz system running Jaguar to Panther. First I
did the simple upgrade, but the system wasn't stable and all of my
applications kept quitting unexpectedly. So I tried the Install and
Archive option. Things seem to have gone from bad to worse. Now when
my desktop comes up all I get is the dock. The menu bar and icons are
not there. If I try to start an application from the dock, the icons
and menu bar come up briefly, but the application then quits
unexpectedly.

Any suggestions on what to do next.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I lost some dock icons in an archive and install of panther from 10.2.8 after
backing things up. Opening those apps again from the location they were stored
brought back the icons as well. The icons in the dock were replaced with
question marks.

If you have any classic experience, think of the dock icons as aliases... what
you have is a dock full of aliases that have lost the path to the application.
Do the application NAMES come up on mouseover?

But you say you have lost the menu bar at the top, for finder and all apps?
When you say you have lost the icons, do you mean those on the desktop? In the
dock? Where.

WHAT application quits unexpectedly?

Try opening the FINDER from the dock. Most of us are used to it being always
on, but I suppose it is possible to have a bare desktop and a dock.