Don't have permissions on my own Mac?

Question

Hi folks..
I would appreciate a little help here.
I just did a complete fresh instal of Snow Leapoard on my Macbook Pro. It is virgin clean with an empty drive and there is only one account, mine as the only administrator.
Yet it seems that I do not have even full read and write access to my own system files. See screen shot. I can not save even mail preferences.
Even though I am the Admin I tried to add myself as a user and give full read and write permissions to the "Preferences" folder which did not help.
But now my Mac won't alow me to delete myself as the user I just created! Why not.
Any help appreciated thank you.

Answer 1

First, I think you went to the Preferences folder in the wrong Library. The ~ in the path indicates your home folder Library. The screenshot above with the mucked up Permissions is the second level HD Library. This is what you should be seeing instead.
And I think there is a basic misunderstanding about the admin group. You may have administrator privileges for your account, but that's not the same thing as the admin group, for purposes of Unix Permissions.
For the Permissions you messed with, get BatChmod, which has an easy to use interface for changing the actual Unix Permissions.
http://www.lagentesoft.com/batchmod/index.html
This is what /Library should look like. Only hit Apply. Do not hit Apply to enclosed or Clear ACL's or anything else. Go to the second level HD Library and drag that folder into the field next to File.
Not being able to save a preference setting may be the result of an overfull startup disk. Do a Get Info, right-click, on the Macintosh HD folder, or whatever you may have named it. to show capacity and available.