Lion not saving settings, iTunes not working, iPhoto not repairing

Question

having a ton of issues and not sure if it's upgrading to Lion, updating iTunes or something else causing the problem.
When I'm logged in as the main user getting a ton of problems including;
1)  no matter which box I check or uncheck or which windows I close before shutting down, every time I log in as my usual user it opens about 20 windows including about 6 files in Excel which I've already closed, said I wanted to delete (they were recovered), etc.  Other windows that open are firefox, settings, a video I started watching about a month ago, etc
2)  applications are frequently crashing
3)  nothing will synch with itunes.  I plug in the iphone, ipad or touch and it recognizes that it's there and then proceeds to do the rotating rainbow thing for ever (I've tried leaving something plugged in overnight) or until I force quite
4)  iphoto indicates that the library needs repairing - repairing does nothing, rebuilding does nothing, repairing permissions does nothing, removing and reinstalling does nothing.
5)  most settings are not saved.  things like changing the Login Items, 'Restore Windows when quitting...' option do not save but things like file sharing options does save.
what I've tried that didn't work;
1) reinstalling Lion
2) reinstalling itunes
3) reinstalling iphoto
4) reinstalling itunes with iphoto removed
5) tried quitting applications with option-command-Q (they still reopened when I re logged in)
5) also tried to manually delete the 'saved application states' but can't get to the folder (can find the library folder but it says the saved application states folder does not exist)
the only thing that works is setting up a new user and logging in there.  Most of the problems seem to go away but all my files, itunes library, etc are under my other user.
so, anyone have any ideas?  if not, is there an easy way to transfer all my files, itunes library (hopefully including playlists!), etc? 
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

lhaw wrote:
the only thing that works is setting up a new user and logging in there.  Most of the problems seem to go away but all my files, itunes library, etc are under my other user.
so, anyone have any ideas?  if not, is there an easy way to transfer all my files, itunes library (hopefully including playlists!), etc? 
Sounds like something malicious or malfunctioning in your user.
What you can do is use the Grouping or other tag feature to tag all your songs in certain playlists, this will apply to the song file itself.
For instance I have music grouped like this:
Popular 00's Medium Hits
Popular 90's Hard Hits
Classic Rock 80's Very Hard Hits
Blues 70's Medium Hits
So I can create Smart Playlists containing the keywords in the Grouping.
No you don't have to go through all that. Something to think about in the future when you switch machines or need to transfer to another user.
You can simply transfer your entire iTunes folder into the Music folder of the new user via the Users/Shared folder, open a copy of the
iTunes Music Library.xml
In TextEdit or another text program with "find and replace" ability.
Change all instances of your old user name with the new one, save and relaunch iTunes, it will load this file and have the correct pathname/user to locate your files so the playlists remain intact.
Once your up on the new user, delete the infected or corrupted one, as that what it seems to be occuring.