Blank desktop in Finder

my iBook starts up -- can see the dock but the spinning beachball doesn't go away but, aside from the dock, there desktop is clear background blue. i can't see or access any files -- drives, storage devices, etc. i can open applications on the dock, though.
i've kept up with all the updates.
what's going on? how do i get my Finder back?

is that...
a) expensive?
Expense is relative. What's expensive to one person seems reasonable to another, so that depends on your circumstances.
Hard drive upgrade services:
MacService
DT & T Computer Services
MCE Technologies
b) something i can do
It's not easy to do it yourself, but, again, that depends on you, and how skilled you are with disassembling and reassembling things. Here are links to online instructions:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/50.12.0.html
http://www.powerbooktech.com/knowledge,name-Hard-Drive,type-6.htm
You need a 2.5-inch diameter, 9.5 mm high (SuperSlim) IDE/ATA hard drive, like those found here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/
Good luck!

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com.apple.sidebarlists.plist (if this exists in 10.2 - not sure)
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Hi robfromkinglake west,
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Using Disk Utility to verify or repair disks
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1782
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Take these steps if the cursor changes from an arrow to a white "prohibited" symbol when you try to move an icon on the Desktop.
Sometimes the problem may be solved just by logging out or rebooting. Try that first, if you haven't already done it. Otherwise, continue.
Select the icon of your home folder (a house) in the sidebar of a Finder window and open it. The Desktop folder is one of the subfolders. Select it and open the Info window. In the General section of the window, the Kind will be either Folder or something else, such as Anything.
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Back up all data.
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Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
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☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You should get a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”). Quit Terminal.
Relaunch the Finder.
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Robert,
Oh boy, you'll have to pay me double for this answer..... ;-D
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Yeah, I know; "The check is in the mail."
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If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
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Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time after you had the problem. Select the messages logged before the boot, while the system was unresponsive or was failing to shut down. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the end of the log extract.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall, spin, or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

Blank desktop in Finder

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