Application folder disappeared completely

[Lucccc]

So I got my new laptop today, refurbished 13.3 inch White Macbook (mid-2010). Bought it online at the Apple Store. Was changing icons around with CandyBar, customizing the dock and such. I've done the customizing before.

One minute I was looking at the Applications folder (Macintosh HD/Applications), and everything was fine. I closed the window, looked up something on Google and opened up the folder again and noticed I was missing every app A through I. Everything before iWeb was gone, just disappeared. Not in my trash, searched via Spotlight and came up with nothing. I thought maybe restarting would help, so I restarted.

Rebooted, logged in and.. the entire applications folder disappeared. Just the folder and the apps, Application Support (Library/Application Support) and such were still there.

Managed to get on Firefox because I had kept the .dmg file after downloading.. but where did my Applications folder go? I googled a bit, found nothing related to this so I decided to post here..

 

[mogallin]

I don't know if this is at all helpful but when I used the terminal ls command a while ago i noted that it lists a lot more folders than I can actually see...

Try the two commands below, exchanging *HDD* for the name of the partition on which OS X is installed.

cd /Volumes/*HDD*

ls -a -F -1

Does it list your applications folder?

 

[Mal]

I don't know if this is at all helpful but when I used the terminal ls command a while ago i noted that it lists a lot more folders than I can actually see...

Try the two commands below, exchanging *HDD* for the name of the partition on which OS X is installed.

cd /Volumes/*HDD*

ls -a -F -1

Does it list your applications folder?

That part isn't necessary. cd / will take you straight to the root of the boot volume.

It's probably also best to use sudo ls -a, because it will show things that might not otherwise be visible if there's a permissions issue.

jW

 

[mogallin]

I'm sorry for this slight hijack but I must thank Mal for pointing that out for me, probably gonna save me a lot of typing