Somtimes whenever I go to open an application, it opens but then closes straight away. This got very annoying in class today when I needed a crucial application, but had this problem. I ended up having to reboot in order for it to work.
Does anyone have the solution to this as I don't want it to happen at an important time anymore?
This is a problem with Rosetta on Intel Macs. I haven't checked individually, but it's probably the case that all the apps you are having problems with are PowerPC binaries (which need to run through the Rosetta translation layer).
You can restart your machine, and they'll work until they break again.
I have this problem too. Sometimes this solution works: open Activity Monitor, sort by 'Kind' (click on the field header in the list) so that all your open PowerPC apps are grouped together. Close each of the open PowerPC apps (either by closing the application itself—if possible—or quitting it from within Activity Monitor). When all of the PowerPC apps are good and closed, force quit the process 'Translated' in Activity Monitor. You'll need an administrator's name and password for this.
Then, try opening a problem (PowerPC) application. If it opens, then success! If not, you're just going to have to restart. I'd say that this works for me about three times out of five.
The problem has been associated with 'Application Enhancer'—is this in your system preferences? I got rid of it but still have the problem; it's pretty annoying! Try searching around the Web for other information about this problem—it's pretty well documented (e.g. search for 'rosetta application launch problem' vel sim.). There is an Apple KB support document which gives instructions for a terminal command to fix Rosetta bindings (or something like that). I've tried that but it's never worked for me.
