Help - imac has no dock, no sherlock, 2 shutdowns etc

[irishboy101]

Help!

Have a imac running tiger 10.4

Problems:
1) It has no dock- clicking on the system prefs to try and get to appear again, hasn't made any difference
2) Two restarts and Two shutdowns appear under the apple menu. duplication of some menu items names.
3) Sherlock doesn't work - type in a word, (enter) and nothing happens.
When you click on a folder, a fine black box highlights everything you click on. Trying to remedy with Universal Access hasn't made any difference.

Operationally applications appear to run okay.

Please advise.

I'm assuming by this behaviour it could get worse.

 

[irishboy101]

Just to clarify, spotlight isnt working, I said sherlock before.

 

[Satcomer]

Read the tips at the X-Labs' SpotLight Tips. One of them might fix it.