Q: URGENT! My dock has dissapeared, the side bar icons in finder are missing, nothing in the finder drop down menu (apple icon) or system preferences are clickable, icons aren't moving either. Restarted and removed battery - nothing.

It all started when I was using Safari and it came up with "alert - couldn't contact spell checker".

I restarted, but then Safari would no longer open, instead bounce in the dock and then close.

Luckily I had Firefox installed!

I deleted Safari, and downloaded it again direct from Apple. It crashed in the last second, but I opened it and it installed - but then crashed and said to try reinstalling. I did this, and it said it was suc cessful but needed to restart.

On restarting, my dock was missing, the sidebar icons in finder was missing, the airport icon was missing, and icons are no longer moveable.

In the finder drop down (apple icon) nothing is clickable, the same in system preferences.

And i've made sure that the icons aren't snap to grid and that the dock is supposed to be displayed (system preferences have not been changed when i entered it, and no changes can be made as nothing is working when clicked).

I cannot open anything, not even disk utility to see where the fault lies, as "the operation could not be completed - an unexpected error occurred (-600)" keeps popping up. The only thing that is working is Firefox, luckily.

Also, I'm not able to shut down unless I hold the power button down until it just shuts down.

Btw I'm on a powerbook G4 PPC, 10.4.11.