Thanks everyone for the help. Yes, the issue is HG does NOT use any changes made until some secret formula is met. Not knowing the secret formula, it is hard for me to get past issues. I did nothing to damage my dashboard group, yet there it was broken. Took a zillion changes before HG decided I met the requirements to reload the .xml file.
I had the same issue trying to get my email working in the recent past.
I just went thru it again this week as I had to change out my router, thus requiring wpa_config reload for new ssid/pw - took a couple tries also.
I see no need for dashboard so did not put it back in; like you Tuicemen, I justhave my groups.
Petera, I am well versed in CHOWN command. I do not "randomly drop files" or folders in Linux. I use WinSCP and putty to go between win/pi. My search skills are much better in windows and much faster on a SSD drive; why I copy whole directories from my pi SD over to wind directories so I can do very fast searches of words within thousands of files in seconds.