To anyone having similar issues: I had changed the permissions in some folder while doing some shenanagins with my computer, so check the relevant permissions in the usr and lib etc folders to make sure that they are correct. While I had permissions to these folders, I had set it so that groups didn't have permission ( I think?), and a lot of applications were operating under group permissions.
Great news. Excellent work on persisting through solving this challenging system misconfiguration problem!
You are welcome. I'm glad it is working now.
Regards,
Per