Installing Lion stops Textedit and Preview launching

Question

Having upgraded to Lion I cannot launch Textedit or Preview properly on my Mac Pro.
I wonder does anyone else have the problem.
Indicators:
I am logged in as myself as     administrator
Both Textedit and Preview crash     consistently on every file, and also if you simply open either     application.
OS is production 10.4. All     Software Updates to date are installed.
My Macbook Pro is also upgraded.     This works OK. So do other Macs on the network.
Guest account on the Mac Pro works     OK i.e both programs launch properly.
If I create a new account on the     Mac Pro (admin or otherwise) all works OK
So the problem is only on my     account on Mac Pro
Other postings point to possible     problem with symlinks(?). There don't appear to be any symlinks in     my home directory. I have never used Terminal, and do not knowingly     poke into system files, permissions etc.  I have attempted though to     follow advice from these postings but no success.
There is also some comment about     Downloads folder. I have deleted all contents from this folder with     no success.
I have run Repair Disk Permissions     in Disk Utility with no success.
The error message below indicates     a permissions problem in Library/Containers/. I cannot find a folder     called Containers. (I have looked into Library pressing the Option     key and Go in Finder.)
Below is part of the error message whenlaunching Textedit.
Process:         TextEdit [2524]
Path:           /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
Identifier:      com.apple.TextEdit
Version:         1.7 (288)
Build Info:     TextEdit-288000000000000~1
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [184]
Date/Time:       2011-08-0114:32:28.049 +0100
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.7(11A511)
Report Version:  9
Interval Since Last Report:         185820 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:          23
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:  14
Anonymous UUID:                     47484EA8-C070-47AA-AFE0-5945EE600D97
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue:com.apple.main-thread
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION(SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001,0x0000000000000000
Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, running initializers
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
xpchelper reply message validation:sandbox creation failed: 1002
Container object initializationfailed: NSCocoaErrorDomain:513 You don’t have permission to savethe file “Containers” in the folder “Library”.
Dest:~/Library/Containers/com.apple.TextEdit/Data/Library/Preferences
Destination permissions info:
  0 stat: 2
-1 stat: 2
-2 stat: 2
-3 stat: 2
-4 stat: 2
-5 m:040375 O acl:(null) LIBRARY
    fs: hfs, fsid: e000009, mf:0480d000
-6 m:040775 U acl:(null) HOME
    fs: hfs, fsid: e000009, mf:0480d000
-7 m:040755 R acl:(null)
    fs: hfs, fsid: e000009, mf:0480d000
Application Specific Signatures:
sandbox creation failed: 1002
The equivalent message for Preview is similar:
xpchelper reply message validation:sandbox creation failed: 1002
Container object initializationfailed: NSCocoaErrorDomain:513 You don’t have permission to savethe file “Containers” in the folder “Library”.
Dest:~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences
Advice gratefullyreceived.

Answer 1

I created another user on my system, and found I could open both Preview and Text Edit fine in that account. I copied (duplicated) the two Containers folders that were created in the new account, changed permissions on the copies using get info, and moved them over to my original user account.  That worked.
However, after making some other changes related to permissions that had me spending 4 hours on the phone with Apple, issues now forwarded to engineering, I started experiencing the same error, crash on opening.
I went to those container folders (com.apple.preview and com.apple.TextEdit) and trashed their contents. After that both applications opened normally, and the missing files were recreated.
Hope this helps.