MacBook Pro responding slowly, beachball, Console errors

Question

Hi everyone.
My friend has asked me to look at his MacBook Pro; he's been having troubles with various applications and the machine responding slowly in general.
Machine's specs:
15" MacBook Pro (Model 4,1); 2.4 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM, OS X 10.6.3
Symptoms:
According to him, the "sbbod" would show up when opening many applications--didn't seem to matter which ones. I haven't been able to replicate the behavior in his user account or in the new one we created for me to use for testing.
What I have noticed are errors like this in Console (this is just a small sample; the same messages are created for nearly all applications opened):
5/14/10 12:46:21 AM smcFanControl[430] Incompatible applications: app=com.eidac.smcFanControl2, targetApp=com.apple.Safari
5/14/10 12:47:01 AM firefox-bin[442] Incompatible applications: app=org.mozilla.firefox, targetApp=com.apple.Safari
5/14/10 12:47:01 AM [0x0-0x3f03f].org.mozilla.firefox 2010-05-14 00:47:01.885 firefox-bin[442:903] Incompatible applications: app=org.mozilla.firefox, targetApp=com.apple.Safari
5/14/10 12:50:49 AM Adobe Reader[456] Incompatible applications: app=com.adobe.Reader, targetApp=com.apple.Safari
The applications seem to function normally, but there is a delay in opening them. I don't understand the error message, so if anyone has insight, I'd love to hear it!
Troubleshooting steps taken:
1) Tried second user account to see if Console messages appear--they do.
2) Used Disk Utility to verify hard drive--all OK, no repairs needed
3) Applied the 10.6.3 v 1.1 COMBO update--no change
4) Reinstalled Safari, since each message mentions Safari--no change.
5) Verified hard drive has plenty of free space (294 GB free of about 500 GB)
6) Verified amount of free RAM--1~2 GB free at all times
7) Used Smart Utility to check integrity of drive--all OK.
I'm honestly stumped by this one and will be grateful for any advice!
~Lyssa

Answer 1

Gonna pass the "solved" star to you, since the suggestion you made is essentially what the gentleman said at the Apple store.
What we ended up doing, since something had gone terribly wrong with the Applications folder, and the system in general, is what he called a "manual merge," which involved the following:
*Copying the entire home folder to an external drive formatted HFS+
*Erasing the internal drive, then installing Snow Leopard.
*Creating a "test" user account with a different name than the original home folder
*Installing available updates to SL
*Changing permissions on the Users folder for the admin group. Permissions were changed from "read only" to "read & write"
*Dragging the original home folder into the Users folder.
*Once the original folder had finished copying, entered System Preferences and created a new user account using the short name from the original as the new account's name.
*System Preferences requested to use the home folder that already existed, which is what was desired.
*Changed permissions on the Users folder for the admin group back to "read only."
*Re-installed desired 3rd-party apps.
The entire thing was kind of a hassle due to slowish FW transfer speeds (took about 3 hours for the 180 GBs of data to transfer off the hard drive to the external, but only 1.5 hours to transfer back after the reinstall) and a few copying errors.
End result: Performance greatly improved, applications no longer jamming, and no data lost. My friend is quite happy.
Thanks again for the input--it helped me get on the right track!
~Lyssa