Mac OS X Mountain Lion Icons Missing

First, don't make such long posts. Get to the point. Second, use a normal font like everyone else. It's much more readable.

Third, you are quite right about making changes to the system without knowing how to undo the changes first. Now that you have things pretty screwed up it will be faster to reinstall OS X than to figure out what you need to undo, and how to undo it. If you were such a computer whiz you would not venture into unknown territory without a plan for getting out safely. That's simply careless and lacks "whiz-iness."

Reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion Without Erasing the Drive

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Wow Kappy! Mean much?

Her post was not that long. In any support forum, most people complain if the OP does not give sufficient information, so she was merely giving details as to what she did. As a human being, we've all made mistakes - including you. That doesn't mean you should bite her head off. SHEESH! I'm sure people have helped you before when you've made mistakes. This is how we learn and become better - not just in the tech field, but also in life.

It was great that you helped her out, but your response before the "help" was harsh, rude, and unnecessarily mean-spirited.