After restarting it I lost all of my desktop icons, and a few icons in the startup bar. The hard drive is bad

I have Googled this and can't make any sense of what I should do to fix or restore it back to what I had.

Don't know if it's relevant but here's what kind of machine it is.

Mac OS X
Version 10.4.11

1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo

2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (Formerly 512MB. I upgraded it a few years ago)

Also it's been getting slower over time and getting the "spinning beach ball of death". The hard drive can not spin up to correct speed. that is why it is slow.



Is this computer on its way out? Yes
I am not ready to scrap it.[/QUOTE]