thanks to every one who offered advice. turns out the problem was self inflicted. powermac's link to an apple article re the g4 problem below rang bells.
this is what happened - i was looking at the osx folder from the 9.2 side and thought i should tidy up some odd documents. they never opened and were never seen when in osx and so i put them in a folder really neat and thereby created chaos.
this was the link - credit to powermac
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805
ian