I seem to have lost all my photos in iPhoto, error code 36,

You're asking a lot of unrelated questions there, and some of them would interfere with the answers to others.

I went to open iphoto and received an error message, asking me to restore iphoto

What's the exact error message you get?

I do have a backup but not sure how to restore

How to restore depends on how you made the back up?

I thought I would just update iphoto with a new version, but my operating system is too old.

You can update via the Support Downloads, just not to v9.5 or later. But it's probably best to fix the issue before you update.

How do I get all (14,000) photos off this computer.

HOw doees this relate to the error message from iPhoto? What do you want to get off? Just the Photos? Or the iPhoto Library? And to where?

Which questions do you want help with?

I have tried to transfer my iphoto library to an external hard drive but the 'finder cant complete operation because some data in iphoto cant be read or written - error code 36. please help

That error message usually indicates that you are trying to copy your iPhoto library to a drive with the wrong formatting. Is your external hard disk formatted for Windows and not Mac?

Any drive you want to be using with iPhoto should be formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled). If the format MS DOS-FAT or similar, the drive needs to be reformatted using DiskUtility, before you can copy an iPhoto Library there. Reformatting will erase the drive. So you will have to move any contents you want to keep temporarily to a different drive.

See: iPhoto: Issues with FAT32-formatted drives

and Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture (or iPhoto).

I went to open iphoto and received an error message, asking me to restore iphoto. I do have a backup but not sure how to restore.

What is the exact error message?