I am running 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. I picked up an internet pop virus or such. I read online to trash the com.apple.safari.plist (or something similar). I did this and now I have no finder. The computer boots up fine. I get to the login screen fine. Upon logging in, there is nothing except some miscellaneous things that are set to open on login. (No dock, no menu bar, no hard drive) I can access some items through key commands. I can login to a secondary user I have on the computer and there are no issues. I have run the Disk Utility. I have ran OnyX. I can start up off an external drive and see the hard drive. I am at a complete loss--please help.

you might have just lost something that was part of your finder experience. Do any icons show up on the desktop? If you look in the dock you should see the blue mac finder logo on the left, is there a dot below it to indicate it's running? (what happens when you click on it?)

Because your system is still good to go (as proven by your alternative user login) you may only need to clear caches in YOUR primary account......this will probably require a trip to the Terminal.

Unless you are comfortable working beneath the hood using the command line interface, you might want to do some Google research to get better informed on how to remove your caches within your primary user account, then check back here for a second opinion.

As a simple starting point, let me recommend a startup in SAFE BOOT MODE....details linked HERE and HERE.

Let us know how it goes.

It seems to me that this belongs in the other forum: Mac OS X System.

There are no icons and no dock. There is nothing to click on.

I started in SAFE BOOT MODE and I was able to login. Everything appears fine--for Safe mode. I have done a little research on how to remove the caches. Which ones should I remove? All? Thanks so much.

Have you tried restarting normally since having successfully started in SAFE BOOT MODE? Sometimes that is all it takes to resolve the challenge.

Perhaps too late for you, but it's a good idea to have a "emergency" admin account you can log into to conduct repairs if your primary account breaks down. Do you happen to have another admin login on the computer? Running the latest combo updater would be the next step I think.

If you don't have that, if you have access to another mac running the same version of mac os x, you can boot your computer in target mode, cable it up to the other computer, and run the combo from there. At this point I would place odds of that successfully fixing it at better than 50%.

Tried a restart, same result.

I do not have another admin login. I will try to make one now. I did run the latest combo update and still nothing.

I do not have another mac running 10.6. All my others are 10.10. I was keeping the laptop lingering on 10.6 to run anything old I might have. I do have an external drive that I am able to boot from.

Have you tried searching /Applications/Utilities/Console > Console Messages for Finder-related entries?

Edit: It just occurred to me that, since Finder and Dock are two completely different animals, you ought to search for "Dock" entries, too.

Strange that both would go down at once. (I don't know to which, if either, menu bar is related.)

trueblued is the gui, on top of which the finder and dock run. it in turn runs off loginwindow. if you've got a mouse and blue screen, trueblued is running, to some degree or other.

Is that in 10.6.8? I don't see it in Activity Monitor or EasyFind.