#2 assorted randomness in 21.1 on 9.2.1

[Anonymous]

I have long used Emacs CW 20.6 without problem.
I installed the binary distribution on my Powerbook 63
running 9.2.1 and it mostly runs fine, but I have the following
problems that I cannot resolve:

cd command does not work, "permission denied"
(cd "/Althea/Users/David/")

background color changes to white except behind text
whenever window closed and opened (c-l restores colors)

most tools/commands do not work.
Get following error for print-buffer, spell check buffer, many
others: "Setting current directory: no Error,
/Althea/Applications (Mac OS
9)/Text/Processing/emacs-21.1/info/"
(directory in error msg is always default-directory)

I have tried this both with Multiple Users on and off.

Any ideas what is going on or how to fix it?