Patch may have trashed account

[hjd]

On June 6th, I installed patch 2.2.3 patch 5
Everything seemed fine. Logged out and went home

However, upon return on the 9th, can no longer start several programs.
NeoOffice starts, but only see NeoOffice in top bar and it goes no further... Must force quit it to close. OpenOffice now bounces and then crashes with the dialog to report or try reopening.

BUT it is not just NeoOffice

The following will no longer open

any DMG file (but can open using mount command in unix)
TexEdit
Calc
Software update
System Preferences (VERY BAD)
Quicktime
Taxcut

BUT the following will work
Thunderbird
Firefox
MS office (word, excel, powerpoint)
adobe acrobat
iTunes
Photoshop
Canvas
Scribus

We have replaced my \library\preferences with a 6/5 backup; no good.

Note: all of the programs can be run from the admin account, so it is only my user account that they won't work from.
Also:
when mount DMG (using unix) for the patch 6, the installer program doesn't run (get the report/reopen/cancel dialog again).

Our IT guy assumes it's the patch 5 that did something, but what??? These programs appear to have little in common.

ANother clue: one java app that will not open if click on it's "app" file will open if go to runtime directory in command line and issue the java-jar program.jar command. So it's whatever reads the "app" to launch that doesn' work.

What other directories do the installers write into? (in user\library\

[rob_06]

Try setting up a new user account with amin privs an see if the apps work again if not then something has, is or maybe was screwe up in the system.

Also try doing a permissions repair and also check the HD for errors these can cause strange issues.

I strongly doubt the Patch caused the problem more like it has made if obvious that it is there.

[hjd]

doubtful:
We did a permission repair already. No problems with any of these programs prior to applying patch 5. I would have thought nothing in patch5 could have done anything to quicktime, etc.

The programs can be launched from admin, so it is the user account that has the problem (the machine is a company machine). They don't want to "clone" me as we assume something in my library was clobbered.
Unfortunately, also one of the things I can't run is

Disk Utility!!!! But the IT guy says he fixed the permissions using the admin account so if it was that they should be fine now.

The final resort it to create a new user account, move over all data, and then reinstall what is specific for my account (we really don't want to resort to that).
Apple support has never seen this happen before.

[pluby]

[ovvldc]

[pluby]