Applications disappearing by magic!!

[DanMau]

Hey guys!

Maybe no one will believe me but some apps just totally disappeared from my application folder without me doing anything...Am on OSX v10.9.4. I was on firefox and cmd+click a link to open a youtube video link in a new tab, got on the page and then the "the script could not be red or run or something like that" little window appears from the window top bar, 1st time i chose continue, it made the colour wheel and the little window reappears this time chose stop so i can close the tab and try reopening the link but firefox went unresponsive. I force quit to reopen but immediately after force quitting a grey question mark appeared on my firefox icon in the dock and i cant open it! No worries i know the drill for this prop so I delete the app from the dock by dragging it out then go to my app folder only to see that firefox have disappeared from there and not only firefox but my adobe reader, file juicer, Skype and photoshop apps had also disappeared! try to spotlight search, file search them but they are nowhere to be found....
Did anyone here ever got this kind of issue on 10.9.4? what can it be and what could have caused it!?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

That seems rather ******, have you looked in the Trash yet?

Does anyone else have access to your Mac, even via remote sharing?

Maybe give ClamXav a try to see, if there is any malware on your Mac.

PS: And you have looked in the actual Applications folder (CMD+SHIFT+A when in Finder)?

 

[DanMau]

That seems rather ******, have you looked in the Trash yet?

Does anyone else have access to your Mac, even via remote sharing?

Maybe give ClamXav a try to see, if there is any malware on your Mac.

PS: And you have looked in the actual Applications folder (CMD+SHIFT+A when in Finder)?

First thing i did was to go to my app folder to re-drag the firefox to my dock and thats when i could not find the app in the app folder then discovered that some other ones apps were gone. Its kind of hard to accidentally delete apps from the app folder as it will prompt you with the admin password window.But i anyway checked the bin. there were other docs that i deleted yesterday but not the apps that were missing from the app folder.
No one has access to my mac apart from me. All sharing is disabled as am a bit of a privacy and security freak.
So its a real mystery for me what happened!!!
I will try the ClamXav to check for malware but i doubt there is any.
Is the ClamXav a safe app? Did you try it yourself?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

First thing i did was to go to my app folder to re-drag the firefox to my dock and thats when i could not find the app in the app folder then discovered that some other ones apps were gone. Its kind of hard to accidentally delete apps from the app folder as it will prompt you with the admin password window.But i anyway checked the bin. there were other docs that i deleted yesterday but not the apps that were missing from the app folder.
No one has access to my mac apart from me. All sharing is disabled as am a bit of a privacy and security freak.
So its a real mystery for me what happened!!!

Not every application needs admin rights to be deleted.

I will try the ClamXav to check for malware but i doubt there is any.

I doubt it too.

Is the ClamXav a safe app? Did you try it yourself?

Yes and yes.

Also check the Console for hints around the time it happened.

 

[igucl]

Were these apps recently installed? If so, can you confirm that they were ever actually copied to the applications folder? Maybe you were running them from the downloaded .dmg file, without ever copying them to your machine.

Just an idea.

 

[DanMau]

Not every application needs admin rights to be deleted.


I doubt it too.


Yes and yes.

Also check the Console for hints around the time it happened.

Thanks for the tips!

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Were these apps recently installed? If so, can you confirm that they were ever actually copied to the applications folder? Maybe you were running them from the downloaded .dmg file, without ever copying them to your machine.

Just an idea.

Those apps were installed for a while already. Even happened to me sometimes to launch them from directly from the app folder or from spotlight as not all of them are on my dock!

 

[maflynn]

Did you use spotlight to search for them, just in case they're in a different location?

 

[Tavicu]

I had a similar problem!

But instead of loosing apps i lost every settings for every app!