Crash side effects!

[jc]

I had OS 9 version of Quark open the other day and it crashed. I just 
killed my computer and had lot's of bad side effects. At the time of my 
restart I had Dreamweaver open as well as Internet Explorer, my OS X 
Address book, OS X Mail and maybe a couple of other things.

When I booted up again all the addresses in my address book were gone 
as well as preferences in Internet Explorer and my settings for a 
couple of web sites in Dreamweaver. No problem with most of that except 
my address book. I had a backup that I made with the feature in the 
file menu but it was way out of date (believe me from now on every 
change in my address book warrants a backup). All my old mail was still 
there which I'm thankful for.

My question is, why would a crash of Quark and reboot cause that stuff 
to be lost?

--jc