Wells, sixfingers, before going further, could you apply the following basic maintenance tips ?

Close all the running applications (except the Finder)
(1) repair permissions
(must be admin)
Launch Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility
On the left pane, select the drive
On the right, select the First Aid (or SOS) tab
Then click on repair permissions and let run; don not worry about messages like " new permissions...."
Quit DiskUtility
Shutdown and reboot

(2) could also download Macjanitor
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_...acjanitor.html
and use it to run the maintenance scripts
The maintenance scripts are Unix scripts which are automatically ran on your
Mac between 02Am and 04 am..if your Mac is on at this moment.
I can advice you to run, through Macjanitor, the daily script each day, the week script each week, ..and so


Now, if you migrate form 10.4.2 to 10.4.3 throught the simple 10.4.3 incremental update, download the 10.4.3 combo update
http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...1043combo.html
and re-apply it over your existing 10.4.3. After the reboot, please repair permissions again

So now post back the results

Regards
Philippe