System Preferences Missing

My system preferences on my macbook pro (os x 10.4.11, just updated) is missing. When I open system preferences on my dock, nothing happens and a ? pops up on top of the icon. Does anyone know why this might be happening and how I could fix it.

Also, I'm not sure if this is related, but my HD seems to be "confused" about how much space is left. It keeps changing from 70mb, to 250mb, to 2.75gb. Generally, when I restart, it will appear as 2.7gb, but when I do something on the computer (move a file, etc), it then says I only have 250mb, etc. What could this mean?

Hi and welcome.

Some confusion with your OS - is it X.4.11 or X.5? If you did an upgrade to X.5 could be some problems there. Also what capacity is the HDD and how full is it? Drives require about 20% vacant space to operate at their peak.

With music and video downloads, an external HDD is the go these days.

I'm running 10.4.11, not 10.5

Right now I have my mac HD in 2 partitions, one for mac and one for windows. I got the bsod in windows and I can't reinstall because my screen is broken (I'm using an external right now). I need to delete the windows partition so I can have more space for mac, but I used the beta of bootcamp, which is no longer available. To be able to use bootcamp, I need to reset my computer's clock to 2007, but I can't do that because I can't access system preferences.

Could I just replace the necessary files, or would that not work?

Well the ? mark pops up like that when the original app is deleted, or moved. Can you not access the System Preferences from your Apple menu, top-left corner? If you can, then run it that way for the moment. When you have it open, just right-click on the icon while it's in the Dock and tell it to stay put.

No, I can't access system preferences from anywhere. I've tried from the dock, apple icon on the task bar, opening up date & time manager, Energy Saver manager, desktop background, etc. I think it's gone.

Ok... here's a thread from Apple's forums with a couple solutions to try:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4425860

Pacifist worked, All fixed. Thanks!