Macbook 5,2 forgetting things.

[Meinlsync]

Over the last year or so my white polycarbonate mid 2009 macbook has been forgetting things. In all other respects it is working perfectly, still blazingly fast running mountain lion (faster then my '11 mac mini) on 4gb of ram. The problem is every time I log in it forgets the background image, puts launch pad, notes and facetime back on the dock. Everything else stays in place. I also have to activate dictation again and remap the key for it again each time. The notes in the dashboard also seem to be stuck with the information. If i delete or add anything its gone next time I boot up. I have tried resetting the SMC and was wondering if there it s small CMOS equivalent type battery that I could replace on the logic board? Or any other ideas to help my increasingly alzheimers riddled laptop.

Thanks

 

[PerformaGuy]

I would recommend creating a new user account, it sounds like something has been corrupted, or back up your files and start with a fresh install of Mac OS X.

 

[Meinlsync]

Thanks for the reply, I had a feeling the HDD was failing but wanted to see if anything else could be wrong. I'm currently saving up for a 256gb SSD to replace the stock drive and luckily everything's backed up constantly by time machine. I've wanted to do a reinstall for a while but school work hasn't given me much time to do it. All my work is backed up on a separate server as well so I'm just going to have to hope it holds itself together until I get a new hard drive.

This you happen 6 months after apple care runs out