Problem with Disk Utility. Can anyone help?

Question

For months now, my friend's iMac no longer verifies or repairs disk permissions. This is what it reports everytime:
Verify permissions for “Macintosh HD”
*Reading permissions database.*
*Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.*
ACL found but not expected on "Applications/Utilities".
*Permissions verification complete*
It does all this within 5 seconds each time. Clearly it is not verifying/repairing disk permissions because normally you get a huge list of permissions and it takes way more than 5 seconds.
So if anyone can tell me what might be wrong or how to go about fixing, I'd really appreciate it.
Thank You,
David

Answer 1

Try this way:
Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
If you continue to have the same issue then while booted into the installer disc select Reset Password from the Utilities menu. Do not make any changes to the password section, rather to the bottom where there is an option to fix the permissions on the user's Home folder and to remove ACLs. Select that option and then click on the Done button (I think it's the Done button.)