Applications crashing after / trying to save files - access finder

Question

Hi
I am having problems with Snow Leopard. Any application which seems to access the finder to store/retrieve files crashes. I can repeat this to make the error occur.
Example
Create a new mail and add an attachment then cancel it - crash
Create a new mail add an attachment and click add - likely crash
Fireworks
Export an image - crash after about 2-3 exports
Xcode
Add files into a project - select some....crash
Safari
Save a PDF of a page....you guessed it - crash !
I've ran disk permissions, checked the disk and at somewhat of a loss to explain what is occurring ! The only thing I can think of is that somehow the finder part of snow leopard is corrupt for my install over leopard - I never had this problem in Leopard.
Any help much appreciated.

Answer 1

Alternatively, there's a conflict or corruption amongst the original preference files (plists) that you need to resolve. While logged into the newly created admin account, backup the bad account's folder, delete the bad account, selecting the save data option (which is stored in /Users/Deleted Users/ as a disk image), recreate the bad account using the same username/password combo, log out and back into the recreated original account. Open the saved data dmg file in /Users/Deleted Users/, open the /Library/Preferences/ folder from the saved data, open the current /Users/restored account/Library/Preferences/ folder, and slowly copy plist files from the saved data folder to the current one that don't exist in it. Log out and back in to ensure there's no conflict and things still work correctly. Resolving conflicts or identifying corrupt plist files is a laborious process. Good luck.