Unwanted icon changes

[Keeri]

Hi all, I hope this is the right forum for this, if not I apoligize and can repost wherever you send me.
At work we have 3 iMacs on a network with a G5 server. We aren't connected to the internet (boss says to avoid viruses, although that smells fishy to me, but alas..), so we're not getting Mac updates. We're running 10.3 if I remember right, and we do graphics, running Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Quark Xpress.
The problem is, sometimes our icons change-for example, I might have an Illustrator file and it should show the Illustrator icon, but occasionally it might be something else, say a Quark icon. Or like the other day my Illustrator file was the thumbnail of a Photoshop file someone on another computer had been working on. Last thursday, my trashcan when I went to empty it, was a house icons I haven't used in months!
It's distracting to say the least and I was wondering if anyone had any insight, thanks very much in advance for anything!

 

[mad jew]

Start by using Disk Utility to repair your permissions and then restart the machines. Then tell your boss you can't get viruses on Macs. Even if he's really cheap and doesn't want permanent access to the 'net, tell him you should still keep your machines running up-to-date software.

 

[Aniej]

I would recommend App Zapper, which you can run and it pulls all the old preferences (.plists) and other associated files off of a computer when you decide to delete an application. So instead of dragging an old application to trash you drag it to appzapper and it takes care of it and all the other files, which sounds like what might be happening here. A good way of seeing the collective list of applications you have the ability to delete, hit the genie button and appzapper populates a whole list.

Then follow madjews advice.