How to remove and reinstall dashboard

Question

My dashboard is not working properly. Each time I try to use dashboard it opens a web page in Safari, thus leaving the dashboard and making it impossible to use my widgets. Is there any way to fix this? Is it possible to remove the widget application and reinstalling it again, from scratch? Where could I download the dashboard application itself, so that I am able to reinstall after removing it?

Answer 1

Back up all data.
Triple-click the line below to select it:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Log out, log in, and test. If there's no change, put the item you moved back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Otherwise, delete the item you moved.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.