Cannot launch Finder/applications

My wife's excellent MacBook (Snow Leopard) has developed a maddening obstruction. When it is booted, it takes you to the desk-top, though rather slowly. Then, either the spinning ball appears straight away, and no further progress can be made; or, there is no spinning ball, but neither clicking nor double-clicking will launch Finder of any of the applications.

As it happens, this time it took me to the desk-top with no spinning ball, but with Stickies open. As soon as I clicked Stickies on the menu-bar, the spinning ball returned.

Can any kind person help ?

Boot her MacBook with the original Snow Leopard DVD, accept the language and license, but do not proceed with the installation. Instead click on the top menu "Utilities" and then on "Disk Utility". Highlight the hard drive on the left side and then select - run Verify and Repair on the right side. Let us know the result.

What the above does is check the hard drive. The symptoms you describe could be because of a failing hard drive.

I have somehow managed to get into Disk Utilities, and am running a Repair now. I shall report back, and meanwhile thank you for so promptly coming to the rescue.

chscag said:

The symptoms you describe could be because of a failing hard drive.

Click to expand...

Yes, Verify Disk has reported that the disc is corrupt, and that I need to do precisely what you have recommended. Many thanks !

Some added info:

When a hard drive is corrupt, it's best to change it out with a new one. Repair what you can, and immediately make a full backup of everything (if possible) on that drive. Use Time Machine or any other method.

Thank you !

chscag said:

Some added info:

When a hard drive is corrupt, it's best to change it out with a new one. Repair what you can, and immediately make a full backup of everything (if possible) on that drive. Use Time Machine or any other method.

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. A few times I have managed to salvage data and either repair or reformat the disk. Sometimes they last a long time after that other times they die shortly thereafter. There's just no good way to know.

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I have booted the MacBook from the Snow Leopard disc -- it proved necessary to hold down the Alt-key while doing so -- and Disk Utility reports that it cannot repair the hard disc, and that I must back up my files, then re-format the hard disc. I am not sure , though, how I can back up files that I cannot at present reach.

My wife says that there are no files that she need keep, so with a loud sigh of relief I have embarked on Erase, Enable Journalling and Install OSX.

Many thanks for your help.

Reformatting that hard drive is not a good solution. As stated previously, when they start acting up like that, it's time to change them out. But it's your decision.

The decision has been taken out of my hands -- the Snow Leopard disc has been unable to re-format the drive, so I rather think that I shall be buying a new hard drive, if I can get one at a reasonable price.