Mail icons disappeared

Well if you know how to re-connect to your email severs then an easy fix is possible. First write down your email server settings. Then quit Mail and navigate to /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and delete the file com.apple.mail.plist . This will reset Mail without harming your Saved emails or signatures.E This only problem is you will have to add your email accounts again but this procedure will fix the Mail problems unless you have an old mail plugin that is causing the problems.

What icons? What menu? You don't mean the white menu bar across the top of your screen do you? Or do you mean the Toolbar across the top of the Mail window?

If you meant "Toolbar," then from Mail's menubar, go View > Customize Toolbar. At the bottom of the resulting window is a "Show" pulldown menu. Does it say "Text Only?" If so, change it to "Icon Only" or "Icon and Text." You'll probably have to do that for numerous windows: new message, reply or reply all, forward or redirect, displayed (message window when you double-click on a message in your inbox), the main viewer window, and the Mail Preferences window.

If Mail is crashing, and you know for certain that your mail account is not a POP account, you could try deleting the mail account from Preferences > Accounts and then recreate it.

OK - well this certainly doesn't sound like an errant mouseclick issue anymore. Sounds like something in Mail.app definitely got hosed. I would try a couple of things at this juncture:

First, would be to run Disk Utility and repair permissions, followed by verify disk. If errors found, you should run Disk Utility from booting up from the Installer DVD, and selecting Disk Utility from the Utilities menu once you've progressed far enough to get a menu bar across the top of your screen, and run "repair disk." If there were any "file system was modified" messages, rerun over and over until you don't get those messages anymore.

Alternatively, you could reboot while holding the ⌘s keys. This brings you up into what is known as single-user mode -- a unix command window. Once you have the login prompt, type fsck -fy⏎. If there were any "file system was modified" messages, rerun over and over until you don't get those messages anymore. Once complete, type exit⏎ to reboot normally.

Then, I would reapply the OS 10.6.4 combo update. You can get it at http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1048. Some recommend (and probably even have an Apple reference to justify it) running Disk Utility repair permissions again. Follow that by an online software update to pick up any subsequently released security patches and other fixes.

If you still have issues after all that, you could try reinstalling the Mail.app. It's on your Installation DVD in the "Optional Installs" folder -- there are a number of user-selectable applications inside that installer. Then, it's the combo update and online software update routine again. But, a reinstall of Mail.app should most definitely get all the icons back. I'd want to do all the verify disk stuff first, though, just to make sure it is being reinstalled on a disk that is in tip-top shape.