Please help ... my entire desktop has disappeared .

[btt]

After booting up my Mac yesterday , the only things I could see was a blue screen , and the little Safari bar at the very top of the screen . The desktop , and all icons were gone . This is the first time I`ve experienced this , and I don`t know how to get things back to normal . It`s an older machine , and it`s running 10.68 , if that matters .
Thanks

 

[Rod]

Yes, it does matter so thanks for including that info. Because you are running 10.6.8 which is called Snow Leopard you have a bit of a disadvantage because that was the last Operating System (OS) not to have a recovery partition.
So there are a few things we need to know;
What Mac model do you have eg iMac desktop, MacBook laptop and if possible the year?
Next, do you have a complete system backup using Time Machine or similar?
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly do you have the installation disks for Snow Leopard?