Utility & Application Duplicates EVERYWHERE!!

[drepacino]

I am very new to mac so please bare with me. Ok, I have a macbook pro OS X leopard 10.5.8 & I have noticed that I have utility and application duplicates, or what I think are duplicates everywhere. In my HD, idisk, my home (under the places sidebar), application (under the places sidebar) and

I am trying to clean some stuff up because since I am so new to mac, I believe I was unaware of the whole process and possibly created copies and/or saved apps more than once. I began to try to delete "duplicates" and now I am unable to access certain apps & utilities. Errors saying that the file folder is not in the right place and file permissions errors. I have no idea what the file permissions etc is or means.

I'm lost and am trying to learn about this but everywhere I search, there is the mac lingo that I am not familiar with. I don't what to screw anything up but have no choice other than to learn through trial and error. Basically, I need to know what if anything can be removed so that I free up some space and what is the pecking order with all the macintosh HD, and other stuff under the places sidebar.

Should all these places contain the same folders, files, docs, etc.? Or is there a folder system that I am not aware of. I am lost and hope someone can be of help and not be brash like I have read in some posts. I am a novice and am trying to learn about it. Thanks for your time and help

 

[decksnap]

I am not sure about your idisk, but everything listed in the sidebar of a finder window is just an alias ('shortcut') to the actual file or folder.

One confusing thing is there are two applications folders... one at the system level and one in your home folder. Most if not all of your apps will be inside the system level applications folder, which there is also an alias of in your finder sidebar.

Also, the actual location of your utilities folder should be within this system level applications folder.

don't delete things until you're sure of what you're deleting. Sounds like you deleted something and now the alias can no longer find it.