Finder hates me. But not my mother. Please help!

[MikeXpop]

Ok, I have a bit of a dilemma here. I was browsing around Neo (kazaa emulator), downloading some files. I don't think that has anything to do with it, but I thought I'd include it because it was the last thing I did different before I shut off the iBook. Later in the day, I started it up again and logged into my name. The first thing odd I noticed was that the toolbar was transparent. All of the icons were there, except for the apple icon. Then I noticed that Finder didn't have that little arrow under it. I clicked it to try and start it but nothing happened. The dock didn't magnetize either. I tried to get on Omniweb to talk to you guys, but that soon quit on me. So did Adium, Opera, Mozilla, and Internet explorer (hey, I was desperate). iChat seemed to be the only program that worked. When iChat opened up, and when the other programs opened momentarily, the toolbar gained it's whiteness back. All of the icons worked, except for the apple icon. When I clicked that, it quit iChat for me. None of my mac owning friends were on, so I restarted. Logged into my account. Same thing. So I restarted again, and logged into my mother's account. It was fine. Every application works. It's also how I'm talking to you guys now. I'm wondering what I should do. I'm still running 10.2.1, would an update help? Is there anyway I can reset my account so to speak, and still keep my settings, and files? Any and all help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[hunt045]

go to the Utilities folder and run repair permissions and see if that cures your problems. If not try the disk repair program.

[slur]

For both "repair permissions" and "disk repair" you need to run the program "Disk Utility" which is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

But from the symptoms you describe it is more likely that your problem is related to a corrupt "preferences" file. Make a folder on the desktop and move all the files in your personal ~/Library/Preferences folder to this new folder, then reboot the computer. If this fixes things then select all the files in the temporary folder and drag them back into your personal ~/Library/Preferences folder, and when asked if you want to replace them enable the "same for all" checkbox and answer in the negative. This will preserve the newly-created preferences files and move the rest back. Reboot again, test things, and if all goes well just throw out the temporary folder.

It might help you to get a book on Mac OS X. It will help you to learn some of the terminology and the interrelation between system features. For example, what you describe as "the toolbar" seems to actually be the "menu bar." The Finder does have a "toolbar" which appears at the top of each Finder window. On the other hand, in some places it sounds like you're talking about the Dock. Without using the right terminology it's hard to get others to understand what you're talking about, and that includes Apple tech support.