Help Needed Please (interesting problem)

[MrFacto]

Greetings everyone,

Looking for a bit of help as I've run into a really weird problem. First the important info:

Machine-
Macbook Pro
OSX 10.4

The Problem-

When I boot computer it starts like normal and up comes the desktop, but just the desktop. Theres no top bar (until I open a program from the dock) When the top does come up all the icons on the right are there (airport indicator, battery, sound, but no time)

All the programs run just fine, except the finder or anything requiring a window to pop up.

Additionally I have lost all my desktop icons! (the "macintosh HD, and the 3 folders I keep info on) I can still go to "recent items" and pull up images in those folders though. Weird huh?

Furthermore if I click on the screan and try to drag (normally creating a box/shape outline) it does nothing.

Normally I would cut my loses and reboot but I left my restore disk back home (in Wisconsin) and I'm in Germany studying! Any help would be great, thank you in advance.

Prost!

Matthew

 

[tyr2]

It might have got it's multimonitor configuration confused. Have you ever had more than one monitor connected to it?

Open 'Displays' in SysPrefs and check the Arrangement tab doesn't have anything you don't expect in it.

 

[MrFacto]

It might have got it's multimonitor configuration confused. Have you ever had more than one monitor connected to it?

Open 'Displays' in SysPrefs and check the Arrangement tab doesn't have anything you don't expect in it.

When I open "displays" there are only 2 tabs, and both look normal. (Std. resolution, etc.) The two tabs are "display and color"

Though by going through system preferences I did manage to get the clock back on the top right. Still no icons.

 

[bartelby]

Have you tried the Finder Prefs?

There are options for what to disply on the desktop, I think.

 

[MrFacto]

Have you tried the Finder Prefs?

There are options for what to disply on the desktop, I think.

When I click on the finder (either through apple->recent apps or through the dock it does nothing) I cant find the finder pref's in system preferences. Weird isnt it?

 

[Bigtree]

How much ram do you have left?

 

[MrFacto]

How much ram do you have left?

This is a "shame on me" but I dont have istat or anything like that on my machine. It came with 1GB @667 and its usually been enough to run photoshop (crunching huge raw photos) while listening to music and surfing the web...

Right now I just have firefox open. Is there anyway to check how much ram I have left without istat? (I cant get to my finder to drop the widget in)

 

[MrFacto]

Any other ideas y'all? I'm in big trouble if I cant get to photos/documents on my machine.

Is my best option having the restore disk overnighted to me?

 

[tyr2]

Is there anything interesting in your logs. Have a look in 'Console' particularly in 'All Messages', system.log and the 'crash reporter' section of ~Library/Logs.

Try and start Finder and see if anything gets logged, it might give a clue as to what's wrong.

 

[byakuya]

I'm a rather recent switcher myself but have you tried repairing permissions?

And in my case running onyx helped fix some weird problems (however, reading the help file is a must since there is a lot you can do wrong with onyx).