Dock preferences mess up on reboot

This is starting to drive me nuts! Running 10.6.7 with all updates
Every reboot my dock gets messed with, all my server/share mount points are the gray question marks- "?"
The app store icon is always returns to my dock on every reboot. (grr) I don't want the app store in my dock, it takes up space...
This didn't start happening until the security update last month.
I've already trashed my dock db/plists twice...
And this has also started on my newly re-installed MBP (also 10.6.7)
Any thoughts or secrets to fix this?

The picture is becoming more clear...
When I booted up tonight, the dock was gone again. This time, before rebooting, I went into Display prefs and, sure enough, it thought I had two displays. When I clicked on the Detect Displays button, it realized that I only had one display and everything went back to normal.
So now the question becomes...
Why does OS X occasionally think I have two displays?
Joe

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