All things considered, William, you might just as well reinstall the OS and
start over. Your description of the problem, the solutions you tried, and
the results are kind of vague, which indicates to me that you are not likely
to be able to do a detailed analysis and repair of the various problems that
now exist. The nuclear option is likely to be easiest for you, and most
likely to succeed.

This is a classic case of "tar baby" syndrome, a common predicament caused
by taking some action without adequate preparation, and then responding to
the resulting problems with the same basic approach recursively, until the
situation is so entangled that a simple repair process is unlikely. It
happens to everyone at some point. Try to make sure it doesn't happen to you
again!