"Applications" menu command - "item cannot be found" - owner/permissions? (10.6.8)

[MacOSExustio]

I'm getting a "item can't be found" error when I use the "Applications" Go menu command. I have a suspicion the problem has to do with the user/group/permissions of the /Applications folder.

I had to reinstall OS 10.*5*.8 because I didn't have Snow Leopard CD at the time, and managed to get the strange screwed-up-"custom-access" problem that was fixed in 10.6.8 (I hope - that's what I read on a couple of sites.)

Disk Utility Repair doesn't seem to repair things in the User directories, so I used Terminal to reset the owner/group for everything that was data to "jswitte:admin" which got rid of the "custom access" problem.

But I also reset the user/group for "/Applications" which I'm guessing caused the "item can't be found". I just set the user/group back to "root:admin" just now, but that didn't fix the problem.

 

[benwiggy]

Did you use the Finder's Get Info, or the Terminal?
Did you change the ownership recursively?

Show the output of the following Terminal command:
cd / ; ls -lae ; echo "done"

 

[old-wiz]

monkeying around with permissions in system folders is always a good way to cause a mess. Often you need a complete reinstall to clean it up.