Desktop Icons flash every 1 to 2 seconds and finder appears and disappears

Hello All,
This one is a bit baffling . . .
After running a number of "software updates" (but I can't tell you which ones) the icons on the desktop disappear and reappear approximately every 1 to 2 seconds. Additionally, 'finder' is showing in the menu bar and the finder 'window' appears and disappears as well. Sometimes the finder window will disappear for 5 to 10 seconds but then it reappears. Whenever any application is started, the application is 'shut down' by the OS without any intervention from the user. I have never seen anything like this. Any ideas you have on how to find out what software updates we ran that might have caused this or how to 'back out' those software updates or just any general ideas on what we might want to try are appreciated.
This is a MacBook Pro purchased late last year and I know we are NOT running 10.5 on this machine.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Laura is a she and that is the computer owner and primary user I am actually Mark 'the' husband just using her id trying to debug this 'thing'.
So thanks for the continued suggestions. I can't get the machine to boot from the CD to be able to run the utilities on the tiger CD. I tried holding the 'C' while booting and also tried option-command-shift-delete with no success to boot from the CD..
I will check try the syslog suggestion and see if I see anything.
Please keep any and all suggestions coming
Message was edited by: Laura Bauer

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