How do I repair admin account permissions in OS 10.6.8?

Those are erroneous instructions. Do this:

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

What Canon told you was mis-stated. If you repair permissions from an installer disc it is as "root." But I think they simply meant doing it from an "admin" account rather than a "managed" account.

If this problem is due to a permission problem it's not likely a system file permission problem. If it's in your Home folder then you can try this:

1. Boot from your Snow Leopard DVD.
2. Select your language and click on the Continue button.
3. Wait for the installer's menubar to appear at the top of the screen.
4. From the Utilities menu select Reset Password.
5. Click on your main hard drive.
6. From the dropdown menu under “Select the user account” select your username.
7. Underneath where it says “Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs”, click the Reset button.
8. Quit the Reset Password utility.
9. Quit the Installer to restart.

No, that error code has nothing to do with permissions. It may mean your system installation has some dysfunction. If the above doesn't fix things, then reinstall Snow Leopard:

Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive

Do the following:

1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions

Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.

If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

2. Reinstall Snow Leopard

If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed with reinstalling OS X. Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files. After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.

Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.

Jumping in, so hopefully I don't muddy the waters. Disk Utility's repair permissions operation only deals with OS files, nothing else. There's never a good reason to enable the root user account. Everything can be done via the Terminal using the sudo command. To reset the admin account's permissions to the standard default, launch the Terminal app, copy & paste this one-liner into the window that pops up, hit the return key, at the Password: prompt, carefully type in your admin user password, since nothing shows up on the screen, and hit the return key.

sudo chmod -R 700 ~/*

This restricts everything inside your home directory to read and write for you and nothing for groups and others.

FWIW, the error, from MacErrors.h is

qErr = -1, /*queue element not found during deletion*/

Why you're getting that is a mystery to me.

I've taken him through repairing permissions as well as fixing the Home folder's permissions, but he still has a problem. The error is not related to permissions, but he's been told to do it by Canon tech support. I don't think they know what they doing.

I suspect there is a problem with their installer, but Canon doesn't want to mess with it.

Sorry, I thought that was only with Lion and ML.

7. Underneath where it says “Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs”, click the Reset button.

I've never had to do that, so missed that it was an SL option. 😊

It's also an option in the Snow Leopard Reset Password utility on the installer disc. There is rarely a chance one should need to use it. But there are those sparse opportunities when someone has really screwed up their Home folder. But that's not the case here, apparently.

I really don't know why Canon put the OP down this path, and they didn't even give him proper instructions.

Right you are the reset password app is there. Do remember now, that it won't run outside the installer app. I thought it would be a useful standalone tool, but that failed all my efforts at getting it to work.

I agree, it sure would be more useful as a simple standalone. I'm sure Apple engineers had a reason for hiding it so well from the user. 🙂