Applications wont open

[omeletpants]

We have an 18 month old Macbook that has worked flawlessly. For the first time, my wife took it to school and turned it on. While she was able to log in none of the applications would open and the screen froze up. When she got home we plugged it in and none of the apps would open nor connect back to our home network. Ideas?

 

[adnbek]

We have an 18 month old Macbook that has worked flawlessly. For the first time, my wife took it to school and turned it on. While she was able to log in none of the applications would open and the screen froze up. When she got home we plugged it in and none of the apps would open nor connect back to our home network. Ideas?

Reboot into safe mode and see if it works. Then check "Console" to see what may be the issue.

Some process may be crashing which renders all programs to stop opening.

I'd also run Disk Utility to see if there's a permissions issue (boot from cd if safe mode doesn't help).