My iMac seems to be a pile of junk

I bought a Mac computer back in 2006. Brand new, so there shouldn't be a issue with a former owner/user.

I know in computer years this is old but I still want to eek out a bit more life. Well about 2 hours ago I attempted to run a repair permission. Seems this is something I should have been doing ever so often?

After restarting it I lost all of my desktop icons, and a few icons in the startup bar.

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".

Is this computer on its way out?

I am not ready to scrap it.

I also have colored vertical lines in the screen. What's going on?

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...7/blackmac.jpg

Can't believe I forgot this, but my biggest issue is the crashes. Can go days with no problems, (other than slow/hanging up) then have one crash after another. Crashed 3 times just trying to get back here to post.

I never have had an Apple but was talking with my mom the other day and she was having problems with hers. She took it in and they said it has 2 power supplies and one was bad causing it to have a mind of its own.

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]

This blows.

The vertical lines could be a bad onboard video. If you have another hard drive, try installing it and mac os again and see if runs normally.