System Events keeps crashing

Question

First of all, forgive me if there is a more appropriate category for this to be posted in. I couldn't think of anything better suited to this exact issue.
On every boot, OS X brings up a standard "Application quit unexpectedly" dialogue for System Events. I can simply close this and disregard it, and it does not affect operation in any way.
However, just recently I have found that when I attempt to launch Adium, the open-source IM client, it hangs for a good deal of time and then brings up the same dialogue. Adium, in the end, is unable to start and must be forcefully terminated.
I was wondering if there might be any relation between the two occurrences. I do not know exactly what System Events is responsible for, and if someone could enlighten me, perhaps I could go about fixing the annoyance at startup, and possibly the problem with Adium at the same time.
Thanks in advance.
Oh, another note: both problems started very recently, at least one of them around the time I updated to 10.4.11.

Answer 1

You can certainly remove System Events from Login Items, and I suggest you do. It serves no useful purpose by being launched independently in that way. It will be 'called' (transparently) by an AppleScript (or something similar) as and when needed. The time penalty for it not already running will be indiscernible.
However, sorry to tell you, but removing it as a login item is unlikely to make a scrap of difference to anything. Having System Events made to run in that way is unnecessary but should not be harmful in any way: it just runs consuming no CPU, only being used when 'called' by an app, and it is the app that is doing the calling that I would suspect. Did you also check /Library/StartupItems?
There is the remote (very remote) possibility that System Events.app itself is corrupted. You can easily check that. Launch Script Editor (in /Applications/AppleScript), paste this line:
tell app "System Events" to say "Hello Benjamin"
Hit <Enter>. The line should format (the text will change its appearance) without error; then hit the 'Run' button. If, as I expect, that causes no error, you are condemned to carry on playing "hunt the app".
Does the error message appear when you log into another account? (Create a temporary account if needed, and then delete it).