application causes finder to crash

[kub3d_root]

I have a serious problem with my computer... every app that I currently have runs and launches fine. Those in Applications, those in other places, all the apps that i've had longer than a week. This past week tho, every app that I download OR compile seems to crash finder. The first time I realized this was while compiling the latest version of adium 2 yesterday to see what's new. After compiling, when I tried to open the "build" folder where the application was, the window closed and finder crashed and restarted. I tried for another two hours, ultimately redownloading and recompiling the damn thing about four times before realizing that it wasnt going to work. Today, however, I downloaded a new application and unstuffed it and tried to run it... but when I double clicked on the application, finder crashed again. I tried several other apps, and it turns out that whenever I try to run any of them, finder crashes. On some its whenever I enter the folder that contains the application, and on some its when actually running the application. I even tried launching the app through terminal using the 'open' command, but I got a "bus error." My system is completely uncapable of running any new applications now. Does anyone know if there is anything I can do because I really dont want to have to format and reinstall because I have a ton of junk on this one and I just dont have time to reconfigure it with all my prefs.

Does anyone know what's wrong or what I should do? Please help!

-----update one-----
Something I just realized.... its only on one account... I created a new dummy account, and everything worked fine in there. Only problem is that I ton of settings on my account that I can't copy over... I could always start again from scratch, but that would take way too long. Has anything like this happened to anyone? where any newly downloaded or compiled apps crsah finder and won't run?

-----update two-----
I just tried running an app from a cd with no luch... same thing as the download apps happened... grrr this is annoying...