Safari and plugins

I have a MacBook Pro with Safari 4.1.3. Very occasionally Safari used to crash, and I'd get the 'The application Safari had to quit unexpectedly' message. But now it's crashing all the time. The second time it crashes after I reopen it now it will say 'click retry to reset Safari preferences' but I was hesitant to do that, as I don't know what all would be lost if I reset it.

I did some research online, and pretty much everyone seemed to be saying that unsupported third-party plugins could cause it to run slow or crash. So I went to the library, opened internet plugins, and dragged unnecessary ones to a folder on my desktop. I didn't have that many, and none that seemed like they weren't ones I had installed or had come with it, but I cleaned it up anyway. I had:

Silverlight.plugin
Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
QuickTimePlugin.plugin
QuickTime Plugin.webplugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
Java Applet.plugin
Java Applet Plugin Enabler
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin
NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave

and disabled (moved to a desktop folder) the last four. I didn't touch any of the others.

It seemed to work- no more constant crashing (I only did it this morning, but so far so good). Except that now Java doesn't seem to be working. Java and JavaScript are still enabled under Safari security, and I left the Java plugins alone, but sites that I used to go to and had work fine now tell me that I need to download Java or update Java, and Flash as well.

Anyone have any help? This is my primary computer and I do a lot online, and I really need to get this cleared up. I don't want Safari to crash or not function properly, but I don't know how to go about patching it up. Thanks!

You should update your Safari to version 5.0.6 it may just solve your problems

I only have the 10.4.11 Mac OS X. It doesn't support the newest Safari. I don't know if I can pay for the upgrade.