dashboard wont open and no com.apple.dashboard.plist files in preference

Hi - I've been trying to access dashboard on my machine and it has never worked. I'm running 10.7.5 Lion and I go to mission control, click on dashboard, and it appears to open but just takes me back to the desktop. I also set one of my corners to open dashboard and nothing happens when I mouse to that corner. The other strange thing that happens is when I check "show dashboard as a space" in my mission control preferences, as soon as I close out of preferences and reopen, it always shows as unchecked again.

Here's what I've tried already:

- repaired permissions - didn't work
- rebooted in safe mode - didn't work
- most common recommendation is to remove com.apple.dashboard.plist from Library>Preferences, but the weird thing is, those files don't exist in my preferences. Rebooting my computer does not populate these files either.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? It seems I probably need the missing plist files but have no idea how I can get them. Thanks!