System Preferences Not Saved After Restart MBP 10.6.8

Hi Everyone,
I've had a difficult time finding an answer to this question / problem that I can understand, and I'm hoping someone can help me. (The IT department where I work has not been able to help.)
Whenever I need to restart my MacBook Pro, a bunch of my preferences are lost. For example, I have to drag Google Chrome back in the dock. I lose my Expose preferences, login items I've disabled still pop up. Keyboard shortcuts with Spotlight (which I keep disabled because of a program I use), get set to default.
It's terrbily frustrating to have to reset all these things over and over again and I can't find the answer. Part of it is I'm not terribly saavy with computer language. I can find the Terminal and type in commands though. If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it. I'll try whatever I need to.
MacBook Pro
10.6.8
Intel Core 2 Duo
(If any more info is needed on my machine, just let me know.)
Thanks so much,
-Scotty

Sounds like you might have a series of corrupt preference (.plist) files, or else more problems.
likely a corrupt
com.apple.systempreferences.plist  and a  com.apple.dockpreferences.plist files in your User/Library folder
However it might not be just that alone
Run through this list of repairs in the order given (1-16)
Step by Step to fix your Mac
If you can't isolate the and solve problem by #16, then do #17 after backing up your data

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