Ical, folder options, Dashboard... all gone hay wire

[basic.works]

I'm not all that "hip" on Mac and all of it tools. I've had this one for 2 or 3 years now and haven't had much troubles. This has changed.

iCal
can't alter an entry without it creating a new one
can't delete an entry, it only comes back a few seconds later
Not only are the "alarms" repeating, they're multiplying and adding more each time another entry is triggered.

Stickies
I usedd to be able to add notes and the like and "quit" the application. When I reopened it, all the "stuff" would still be there. Not anymore, it won't save a thing unless, I assume, I save the file manually, in which case I'm better off to just use TextEdit.

Dock
Though I can add an app to my dock and tell it to "keep in dock", it will, even after I quit the app. How ever, when I log out of my user account or restart the machine, the apps are no longer on the dock.

These are what I've noticed, thus far. It all seemed to start right after last weeks updates notices I received. Oddly but maybe that the way it is, I as using my computer but had to uninstall a program and in order to do that, I needed to go into my Admin account to perform the task. that's when I got the notices. They came via 'Mac software updates" as far as I know.

Please, is there any one out there that could offer some guidance?

 

[devburke]

One thing to try is repairing your permissions. I don’t know if this will help or not, but often it’s a first thing to try if something on your Mac seems off.

Open up Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities), select your main hard drive, and click “Repair Disk Permission”. It might take a little while, and may not fix your issues, but it’s worth a try.

 

[Gregg2]

If Repair didn't work (and I doubt it would) you could "test" to see if the respective plist files are corrupt. It seems odd that three would "go out" at the same time, so I'm not optimistic, but...

Go to your Home folder, open Library, then Preferences
Find these files:
com.apple.iCal.plist
com.apple.Stickies.plist
com.apple.dock.plist

You might want to do this one at a time:
Move a file to the Desktop
Start up its application

If all is well, the file on the Desktop can be Trashed.
If not, you might want to consider reinstalling the OS. It's not isolated. Three things at once, all related to the OS in that they get installed at the same time....

BTW, your title mentions Dashboard, not Dock. It has a plist file as well:
com.apple.dashboard.plist

 

[basic.works]

still having hay wire happening

I repaired permissions and it didn't change a thing. As instructed by another supposed Mac Guru, I deleted:
-com.apple.iCal.plist
-com.apple.Stickies.plist
-com.apple.dashboard.client.plist
-com.apple.dock.plist
-com.apple.systemprefrences.plist (I think that was the name)

They all came back but the last one. Everything always seems to come back how it was before logging out, for the most parts.

But it still made no difference. I attached a summary of the results from the "Disk Utility, repair permissions". I looked at a number of the files and none of them have the lrw-r--r-- nor the -rw-r--r-- in the code, or whatever you want to call it, at least none that I looked at, which was a few.

If there anymore insight or ideas... I'm listening... uh... watching!?

Thanks for the help thus far.

 

[basic.works]

hay wire

sorry, I meant to also add that I'm having issue with the Dashboard AND the Dock as well as iCal, Stickies and the computer resetting evrrything it can back to the way it way at last start up.

 

[Gregg2]

Sorry that didn't help. Troubleshooting is by its nature a trial and error process.

You could try downloading the update again from the Apple website and reinstalling it. Maybe something went haywire last time.

The "nuclear option" is to reinstall the entire OS. Hope it doesn't come to that.

Help! More ideas needed...

 

[basic.works]

no little too late.

thanks for the help, y'all. I forgot to reply back to this post. f it matters now, I gave up and ended up deleting the user account. Then, eventually, had to nuke to OS and start from scratch. By the way, whether it played a role in it or not, I don't know but my HD crapped out shortly after, I suspect. I kept experiencing more and more glitches and crashes and eventually, it got to the point where I was unable to run 2 apps at the same time and finally woke up and realize the HD was foo-barred.

It's never too late to send a thanks.

so... Thank you for the time and effort.