SyncService Folder is Missing

Question

Greetings:
I am having a strange problem on my Dad's iMac. It started running very slowly and takes a long time to launch applications - any app. I began looking closer at it and discovered that I could not select the sync icon located at the top toolbar on the desktop - click on it and nothing happens. I went to System Preferences>Mobile Me>Sync and when I click on the tab nothing happens - it will not even open the window.
After doing some initial searches on line I tried launching iSync to reset the sync history data. iSync will not launch - instead gives an error message of a time out exception error to the server. So I tried using the terminal command to reset the Sync Service folder and that failed too and returned the following message:
jxxxx-xxxxs-computer:~ jxxxxxx$ /System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsyn c.pl full
2009-08-24 21:24:53.182 perl[230:10b] SyncServer is unavailable: exception when connecting: [NSPortCoder sendBeforeTime:sendReplyPort:] timed out (272859893.178179 272859893.182150) 1
PerlObjCBridge: NSException raised while sending reallyResetSyncData to NSObject object
name: "ISyncServerUnavailableException"
reason: "Can't connect to the sync server: NSPortTimeoutException: [NSPortCoder sendBeforeTime:sendReplyPort:] timed out (272859893.178179 272859893.182150) 1 ((null))"
userInfo: ""
location: "/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsy nc.pl line 16"
** PerlObjCBridge: dying due to NSException
After this I made an interesting discovery. I looked in \Library\Application Support and there is no SyncService folder there at all. I went into Time Machine and went back to a year and a half ago searching all points in between and this folder has never existed. Based on what I'm reading this is an extremely important folder and it appears it has never existed on this computer. My Dad does have a Mobile Me account.
Can anyone offer any ideas on this one? The more I dig the more confusing it gets. Thanks.
Oh - my Dad's machine is running Leopard 10.5.8 and this problem just started a couple of days ago out of the blue.

Answer 1

Thanks for the input. I checked on my Mac Pro for reference and I have SyncServices folders in both locations; that is in both the root location and in my user library. On my Dad's computer he has none in the root and he did have one in his user's path but the contents of that folder looked practically empty compared to mine. I will go back through that folder and see if I can find a folder marked as "locked" and try deleting that to see if helps.
Do you have any other suggestions I might try to get around this? Otherwise it looks like I may have to reinstall the OS. Thanks for your time.