Apps not opening

[Sharewaredemon]

Hey I just got my brand new eMac 1.25 ghz 1 gig ram 160 gig hardrive and I love it. I have unfourtunatly faced a problem, about a week after I'd had my computer I tried opening iMovie and for some reason the icon would bounce a few times, then stop bouncing and not open. I called Apple and they walked me through a few things including restarting the computer with command s or option s and typing text in to check the computer. Anyway the person over apple finally told me there was nothing wrong with my ocmputer and that I would have to do an archive install. Which I did and this fixed the problem. Until today, when I tried opening Tony Hawke's Pro Skate 4 the same thing happened, the icon bounced a little then stopped bouncing and the app didn't launch. Has anyone encountered this, and do they know of anyway of fixing this other than reinstalling the os because I that isn't something I want to be doing all the time.
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.

[stoid]

Try deleting the preference files for the broken apps. They should be in Library, either the main one, or in your home directory.

[Sharewaredemon]

i already tried that sorry for not mentioning it. That didn't work both times applications didn't open

[osprey76]

Did you run repair permissions using Disk Utility?

Also, are you logging in as an admin user? (you are there is only one account on the computer)

[Sharewaredemon]

i'm running disk utilities repair thing now,

but yes i am an admin user and there is only one user on my computer.

[Sharewaredemon]

i ran repair permissions and the app still won't open
i guess other than having every application backed up there is now way to reinstall one aplication that comes with the operating system

[realityisterror]

as grisly as the thought is, you may just want to wipe the drive clean and reinstall panther... you'd be amazed how much easier it'll be if you do it today versus 1 month in the future since your computer is so new...

i think you'll find the benefits to be worth it...
2 more posts till 500!

reality

[Sharewaredemon]

i spose so but i have 72 gigs of stuff on it already arg so you're thinking another archive install won't be a permanent solution?

[EMKoper]

I had a similar problem, the bouncing icon(s) and no app start. But mine started with just one app (iMovie) and about a week later another and so on until I had about 5 apps that wouldn't open. At the time I was using 10.2.? and I found something on Mac OSX Hints (http://www.macosxhints.com/) that sorta described the problem and the fix was to look for a corrupt font in the system folder. I removed fonts a few at a time until my apps opened OK .... narrowed it down to a small set of fonts ... then to one (stupid Helvetica) and my bouncing app problem went away.... doesn't make much sense to me, but maybe someone here can shed light on why this might fix a problem such as that...

[Sharewaredemon]

well i don't have any fonts on my compute other than the stock fonts and perhaps any fonts installed by office x
but i'll try that

it's wierd though becuase i fixed imovie, by doing an archive install, but there has to be a better solution, as i don't feel like doing that every time an app acts up