Security update 2007-007 gives TextEdit & RTF file error ?

Question

I am having trouble editing RTF files using TextEdit and I think the Security Update 2007-007 is the culprit, but have no idea how to fix this.
I have repaired permission via disk utility, but this did not fix the problem.
When I use TextEdit to edit existing RTF files, the file is brought up into the window, but the contents are in its raw format. The TextEdit window has:
{\rtf1\mac\ansicpg10000\cocoartf102
{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset77 Arial-BoldMT;\f1\froman\fcharset77 Times-Bold;\f2\froman\fcharset77 Times-Italic;
\f3\froman\fcharset77 Times-Roman;\f4\froman\fcharset77 TimesNewRomanPSMT;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
and so on for the file.
If I edit this same file with Safari, the xxx.rtf file comes up nicely formatted.
I am able to see that the Security Update 2007-007 was installed on
2007-08-14 23:02:04 -0500: Installed "QuickTime" (7.2)
2007-08-14 23:04:28 -0500: Installed "Security Update 2007-007" (1.0)
As per the software update log file.
Also, I see that the TextEdit application file was changed at around same time:
ls -l /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents:
drwxrwxr-x 4 root admin 136 17 Aug 07:41 MacOS
everything else in the directory has a 2003 date on it.
Inside MacOS directory is the TextEdit binary, which also has the same new modification date.
I grabbed a TextEdit binary from another machine (a G3 running 10.3.9) that has not had the security update on it and replaced my TextEdit, and after rebooting just to make sure it was not running an in memory copy, the problem still persists.
The sum for the broken TextEdit is: 30845 128 TextEdit.broken
Also, if I create a new file with TextEdit and edit it (bold, underline, etc) and save as an RTF file and then close the file. When I re-open the file, the file comes up as raw garbage.
So, TextEdit is dead. Any ideas how to revive it?
thanks

Answer 1

pdmazz:
Welcome, again, to Apple Discussions.
I don't use TextEdit myself, or work much in RTF, so some of your more technical descriptions are lost on me. However, here are a couple of suggestions:
Try starting up in Safe Mode. Here is what Safe Booting does: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X)
My second suggestion is to use Pacifist to extract TextEdit from the install disk and install it on your computer.
Please post back with update or further questions.
Good luck.
cornelius