app icons magic trick

[OrangeCuse44]

I just went into my Applications folder and half of my icons have magically disappeared! They now show the icon with a circle and cross through it as if it's missing. Whats goin on?

EDIT: I recently verified and repaired permissions, does that have anything to do with it?

 

[Lixivial]

I'll assume it looks something like this:



This is usually an indication that the application bundle is not supported on the platform, either because it's Classic (on Intel Machines), or a architecture specific compiled application (not a Universal Binary).

If this is a recent development/change, then have you run any sort of maintenance/cleanup programs such as Onyx or Monolingual, etc? Aside from permissions, have you done anything "major" recently? (System update, any sort of modification, any software installations, etc). If not, it could be an indication of further system destabilisation.

If this is on an Intel Macintosh, control-click (right-click) the application and click "Get Info" and confirm that its "Kind" is either "Application (Intel)," "Application (Universal)," or "Application (PowerPC)" in the popup window.

 

[OrangeCuse44]

Nope, just repaired permissions and downloaded some pr0n via torrents (gotta be honest). Cant be a virus tho...

 

[Lixivial]

Well simply repairing permissions shouldn't result in applications losing their head. Strange sort of anomalous system behaviors can be an early sign toward hardware problems or a software install gone awry. Are you able to open any of these applications? Can you provide a screenshot showing an example of your problem?

I'd probably try booting off my restore media and repairing the hard drive in Disk Utility until it returns no error messages. Perhaps even run another permissions verify and repair again. And, also, I'd probably check out the hardware test while I was at it.

I guess the next thing I'd do is consult /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and open system.log (and console.log, although there will be a lot more noise in there) to see if there's any sort of mention of missing libraries or frameworks. Check out various crash logs, too. These are all available under File -> Open Quickly -> ~/Library/Logs (and /Library/Logs for system-related apps like Finder) -> CrashReporter

All these things are sort of first steps in troubleshooting. And by the way, the more detail you provide -- such as when you first noticed this behavior; what you had one prior to the first instance of this happening; any other sort of strange behaviors, such as crashing applications, etc -- the easier it is for people looking to help you.

 

[OrangeCuse44]

This is what im seeing in my applications folder, as i scroll down thats what it pretty much looks like. As far as any other system behavior i havent noticed anything out of the ordinary. I'll try repairing permissions again and see what happens. Strange because i havent ever done any other system maintenance before besides the permissions just to give it a whirl. Oh, and all these apps work just fine.