All of my application disappeared

[fstigre]

Hi,

For some reason all of my application have disappeared. Last night I was using my computer, I installed a new program (PHPStorm) used it for a while and right before shutting it down I got a system update notification so I clicked the install and shutdown option and went to bed.

This morning I turned it on and I noticed that non of my app icons showed up in the dock so I rebooted my computer but nothing, again no apps, I went to the System/Applications folder and it is empty, only the mail app and the Utilities folder are there, after this I restarted/rebooted a few times but nothing. The interested thing is that I went and used the Guest account and everything is there, infact I created a new account and all of my Applications are there and function just fine but not in my user account.

I know I can start with a new account but this would be a pain since I will loose all of my applications data (Quicken, Terminal Configurations etc.) and any configuration I have per application. I do have an old Time Machine back up (few months old).

Any idea what could I do before I move onto a new account?

FYI - I removed PHPStorm but it didn't help. Also when I'm in the account with the issue the computer runs very SLOW.

System:
OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 (15E65) - Time since boot: less than an hour
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)
iMac - model: iMac13,1
1 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4-core
8 GB RAM
BANK 0/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
BANK 1/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - VRAM: 512 MB
iMac 1920 x 1080
VX2450 SERIES 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz


Thanks a lot.

 

[stuartak]

Hi,

For some reason all of my application have disappeared. Last night I was using my computer, I installed a new program (PHPStorm) used it for a while and right before shutting it down I got a system update notification so I clicked the install and shutdown option and went to bed.

This morning I turned it on and I noticed that non of my app icons showed up in the dock so I rebooted my computer but nothing, again no apps, I went to the System/Applications folder and it is empty, only the mail app and the Utilities folder are there, after this I restarted/rebooted a few times but nothing. The interested thing is that I went and used the Guest account and everything is there, infact I created a new account and all of my Applications are there and function just fine but not in my user account.

I know I can start with a new account but this would be a pain since I will loose all of my applications data (Quicken, Terminal Configurations etc.) and any configuration I have per application. I do have an old Time Machine back up (few months old).

Any idea what could I do before I move onto a new account?

FYI - I removed PHPStorm but it didn't help. Also when I'm in the account with the issue the computer runs very SLOW.

System:
OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 (15E65) - Time since boot: less than an hour
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)
iMac - model: iMac13,1
1 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 4-core
8 GB RAM
BANK 0/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
BANK 1/DIMM0
4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz
Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - VRAM: 512 MB
iMac 1920 x 1080
VX2450 SERIES 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz


Thanks a lot.

I presume you are logging into your user account ? If the other accounts are still there then it is likely your user preferences and data will still be there .
I would have a look at your user setting from "root" user which is the basic "user" in osx to see if your preferences under your user account are still there this link will show how to do it , but be careful if you are not familiar with using root access.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204012

 

[fstigre]

I presume you are logging into your user account ? If the other accounts are still there then it is likely your user preferences and data will still be there .
I would have a look at your user setting from "root" user which is the basic "user" in osx to see if your preferences under your user account are still there this link will show how to do it , but be careful if you are not familiar with using root access.
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204012

I recovered from Time Machine by rebooting and pressing command + R and it worked. Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Sounds like a simple permission issue, that shouldn't have happened.

 

[fstigre]

Sounds like a simple permission issue, that shouldn't have happened.

I know I was disappointed to see that happen. I did fix file permission but NOT from the bad-user account I did it from a new user account since I couldn't access the terminal from the bad-user account, I'm not sure if it matters where you execute the command from.