No icons for items on my desktop and finder doesn't open

I'm not sure what I've done, but for some reason I cannot access my hard drive or my finder (among other things). Spotlight will locate items but I can't open those items from spotlight. I recently installed CleanApp and deleted a number of files that seemed appropriate. I ran Disk Utility to repair disk permissions and mostly it said that there were various permissions that were wrong and it would not repair them. I am running Leopard 10.5.1. Also, I cannot access my external hard drive on my desktop though I can see that it is attached when I search a location through an application>open program. HELP!

It sounds like you have deleted some files that are required for the desktop to show up properly. I'm not sure exactly what will need replacing; maybe someone else here can tell you that.
My solution would be to reinstall 10.5.1; you will want to back up any important files have installed on the Mac that you won't be able to reinstall. Hopefully you can do this via your external drive, or possibly copy them to blank CDs or DVDs if possible.
One way to check on this, and/or back up any files you need would be to try and startup your Mac from the system software disks that came with it, or your Leopard disks, if they are different.

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