Dock Doesn't Show, System Prefs won't open?

I've had my G4 iBook (10.3.9) for almost 2 years now. I wasn't sure where to post this, hope I found the right spot.

I don't know if I have 3 separate problems or if they are all connected. About two months ago, my computer started to freeze up on me after I had been using it for about a half hour. I've never noticed if there is a set time it crashes. It just seems like after about 30 minutes it freezes. It doesn't seem to crash when I'm doing anything in particular. A lot of times when it freezes and I try to restart it right away, when it gets to the Blue Screen it just stays Blue and nothing happens.

Well then about a week or two later, after I restarted one time I noticed my desktop background had changed to just a solid blue and my Dock wasn't showing up. Then I tried to open up System Preferences and nothing happened. I couldn't get System Preferences to open up. Also my Clock, Battery and Airport (though it still works) icons don't show up at the top. It lets me do basically everything else. One more thing I can't click on any of the icons on my Desktop. I can get to them by going to GO and then opening up the window.

I'm sorry if this has been covered, I've tried to read through a lot of posts and search for something, but I haven't seen anything. I've also been searching the internet like crazy for some help on the Dock not showing up and the System Preferences not opening, but I must be using the wrong search words cause I can't find anything.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Unfortunately I don't think I have the System Disks anymore. Is there anything I can do without them? Or am I going to have to buy them again.

Thanks

Hi nevermind31 & welcome to the forum.

I think you should try a few of these suggestions.

Create a new user account and report back if the problems still persist.
Delete Finder prefs as per the instructions HERE.
Download OnyX and run it to clean and optimise your iBook.

Please post back either way and we'll see if we can't sort this out together.

update

Thanks for the quick reply...

Create a new user account and report back if the problems still persist.

Click to expand...

I can't get into my Preferences to do that. I logged in with a couple of users I had made way back when I got my iBook, and it wasn't any better.

Delete Finder prefs as per the instructions HERE.

Click to expand...

Didn't seem to do anything

Download OnyX and run it to clean and optimise your iBook.

Click to expand...

I downloaded version 1.5.3 and when I opened up the Zip, the .dmg file only brought up the Package Icon (I hope that's understandable, as I'm not sure what it's called) and when I try to open it it says "you cannot open this application because it may be damaged or incomplete."

So I don't know if I'm doing something wrong there or not too. I used to think I knew a little bit about computers. But the longer I live, the more I realize I don't know much at all.

Thanks again for any help...