Keychains corrupted after Security Update 003 Panther?

Question

I installed Security Update 003 and now my keychains and the Keychain Access app won't work.
All the keychain items in my User keychain are inaccessible, for example WLAN passwords won't work with the WLAN station and secure notes won't open. Mail can't access the email-account passwords.
As soon as I try to open or manage keychain items, I get the spinning pizza, wheel of death. Keychain Access becomes non-responsive and I have to force quit.
I repaired permissions before and after installing the security update and I didn't do anything else at the time of the update, no other apps were open, etc.
I tried trashing the Keychain Access preferences and creating a new user keychain with the Keychain First Aid. But no aid there. Even the new keychain items created in the new empty user keychain will become inaccessible as soon as they are created.
The same thing happened with the sec update 002 and I ended up reinstalling my "pre-security update" system from the backup. I thought that Apple would have solved this by 003, but to my amazement the same thing happened again.
Any hints what to do? All help very much appreciated.

Answer 1

UncleGeorge:
Glad you were able to get things sorted out. And you are most welcome for whatever assistance I may have afforded you.
After a hard reset (forced shutdown) it is always a good idea to starup in Safe Mode as that kind of cleans things up, does a Disk Repair etc.
You may also want to take a look at Gulliver's Mac OS X System Maintenance which has great advice and links to good resources.
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Thank you, and good luck.
cornelius