I bought a Mac computer back in 2006. Brand new, so there shouldn't be a issue with a former owner/user.

I know in computer years this is old but I still want to eek out a bit more life. Well about 2 hours ago I attempted to run a repair permission. Seems this is something I should have been doing ever so often?

After restarting it I lost all of my desktop icons, and a few icons in the startup bar.

I have Googled this and can't make any sense of what I should do to fix or restore it back to what I had.

Don't know if it's relevant but here's what kind of machine it is.

Mac OS X
Version 10.4.11

1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo

2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (Formerly 512MB. I upgraded it a few years ago)



Also it's been getting slower over time and getting the "spinning beach ball of death".

Is this computer on its way out?

I am not ready to scrap it.