[philm]

A friend of mine running 10.2.6 says that when she starts up, her menu bar and finder items have disappeared. The items from the menu bar (the time, for example) are apparently present, but of course difficult to see as they are black against a dark blue background.

She can launch apps via the dock, but they crash after few seconds and the system freezes.

So, over the phone, I told her to do cmd-S and then fsck -y a few times, but this has not helped.

Any ideas please?

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Originally posted by philm:

So, over the phone, I told her to do cmd-S and then fsck -y a few times, but this has not helped.

Any ideas please?

You should repair permissions (search those item in the forums).

[blackbird_1.0]

..or restart the mac...that what i do

[philm]

Originally posted by philm:
Any ideas please?

For anyone who looks this up in the future, here is the answer. In this case, the finder did not launch for some reason - there was no black triangle in the dock next to the finder icon. I figured this might be corrupt preferences, so I booted up from a Norton CD (I could not get into the HD with a regular bootup because the finder had not started...), deleted ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and all was well after a restart.