Scrambled Text in Finder & Desktop

Question

My friend was rushing one day and he disconnected his ipod without properly ejecting it in OSX. When he got home later his desktop and finder menus, etc. are not legible anymore. All the text on his menus consist of an "A" in a square box. Can anyone help please? I have screenshots of the desktop if anyone likes to see them. Here are some error messages from console...
Mac OS X Version 10.4.9 (Build 8P135)
2007-04-21 20:10:25 -0700
2007-04-21 20:10:25.830 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:26.536 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:26.593 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:28.586 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:31.468 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:38.857 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:38.881 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
2007-04-21 20:10:38.897 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
Apr 21 20:10:39 shigeru-WC-iMac-G5 diskarbitrationd[39]: SystemUIServer [188]:19459 not responding.
2007-04-21 20:10:39.305 Finder[189] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.

Answer 1

Ok, I opened terminal and typed this and this is what I got... Do I need to save changes in terminal before I restart? I have this file in finder, but not with OLD after the file name. Please advise.
Welcome to Darwin!
Erics-iMac-G5:~ iMac$ cd /Library/Preferences
Erics-iMac-G5:/Library/Preferences iMac$ mv com.apple.finder.plist com.apple.finder.plist.OLD
mv: rename com.apple.finder.plist to com.apple.finder.plist.OLD: No such file or directory
Erics-iMac-G5:/Library/Preferences iMac$