Menu Bar/Desk top items will not show up

[Catholm]

I have a Mac OS X version 10.5.8, one of the 2008 black/white models. Yesterday, I was messing around with my computer because the hard drive will not show up in the finder (I already did the system preferences, doesn't work). However, I guess I must have deleted something because when I restarted my computer, the menu bar blinks in and out unless i get onto safari but I can't get into finder at all. Also, All of my items on my desk top are gone. And I can't get into Itunes (file locked, on a locked disk, or do not have written permission to enter it)

I'm assuming this means I need to take it in and get it fixed. But I wanted to see if I can do anything to avoid that because I am in college and have a paper every week so I pretty much live off of my computer. Thanks guys!

 

[Queso]

Sounds like you've enabled Parental Controls and given yourself the simplified Finder. You need to log in as an administrator account to correct.

 

[Gregg2]

the hard drive will not show up in the finder...
I can't get into finder at all.

Are those two ways of saying the same thing? (That is, if the HD icon doesn't appear, you can't open it.) I see people writing all kinds of strange things about Finder. Just curious about this one...

Anyway, the above suggestion sounds promising. Let us know if it works.

 

[Catholm]

It did not help.

What I mean to say is when I logged onto my computer, the icons on my desk top did not show up and I can not get into finder. I click on finder and nothing happens. I can't even get into the apple menu unless I get into an application, like safari. My home screen is completely blank besides my dock.

 

[Gregg2]

Ok, if you see your Desktop, you are in Finder. When you're looking at the Desktop, and the menu bar is behaving, it probably says Finder in the upper left next to the . But that's just a matter of understanding the lingo. It seems that what you are saying is that no Finder Windows will open. To clarify, is that absolutely none, zip, nada? Absolutely no windows showing folders/files?

If so, that's a problem for what I'd like to suggest, which is replacing your Desktop and Finder plist files. But, if you can't get Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences to open, I'm not sure how to tell you to go about doing that.