Help, No applications on my mac work!

[Enoch07]

I am running os x Yosemite. I have 480 GB of available storage. Every application i use (except safari) is working. For example, if I open Photo Booth, nothing happens. I press cmd+opt+esc and it says not responding. then i have to force quit. This happens with every other program. In audacity i can open it and record things. but if i save the project, i get a beach ball and i have to force quit. If i try to make a video call in Skype, same thing. All of these also happen with the adobe suite. No program will work. For some reason, the programs only work in safe boot. I tried verifying and repairing disk permissions. That did not work. I tried uninstalling everything program on my mac (except default programs). I even went as far as reinstalling os x all together. Not even that solved the problem. My mac had to be taken back to the store. They said nothing was wrong with it. What could be the problem. I don't think it's a hardware issue. Don't think it could be a software issue either because I reinstalled the entire os. So what could be the problem? I don't to us my computer in safe boot because my Wacom tablet will not work and the computer will be slow. Please give me a solution. This mac is the only computer I have and I need it to animate. Thanks in advance!

 

[yjchua95]

I am running os x Yosemite. I have 480 GB of available storage. Every application i use (except safari) is working. For example, if I open Photo Booth, nothing happens. I press cmd+opt+esc and it says not responding. then i have to force quit. This happens with every other program. In audacity i can open it and record things. but if i save the project, i get a beach ball and i have to force quit. If i try to make a video call in Skype, same thing. All of these also happen with the adobe suite. No program will work. For some reason, the programs only work in safe boot. I tried verifying and repairing disk permissions. That did not work. I tried uninstalling everything program on my mac (except default programs). I even went as far as reinstalling os x all together. Not even that solved the problem. My mac had to be taken back to the store. They said nothing was wrong with it. What could be the problem. I don't think it's a hardware issue. Don't think it could be a software issue either because I reinstalled the entire os. So what could be the problem? I don't to us my computer in safe boot because my Wacom tablet will not work and the computer will be slow. Please give me a solution. This mac is the only computer I have and I need it to animate. Thanks in advance!

You could first try writing your post in coherent sentences and paragraphs.

It sounds like your hard drive could be on its way out as well, or you've got a corrupted Yosemite installer.

 

[alex0002]

Did you solve all the problems in your previous thread?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1845006/

How did you fix it?
So unfortunate that you are now having these new and unrelated problems.

Or is this really a continuation of the other thread?

 

[simonsi]

The fact that it works in Safe Mode indicates it is probably an issue with one of your login apps.

Go into Preferences, Accounts, your account, then remove your login items one-by-one, reboot each time, when you remove the one causing the problem it should boot and run normally.

 

[Enoch07]

The fact that it works in Safe Mode indicates it is probably an issue with one of your login apps.

Go into Preferences, Accounts, your account, then remove your login items one-by-one, reboot each time, when you remove the one causing the problem it should boot and run normally.

I have no login items

----------

Did you solve all the problems in your previous thread?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1845006/

How did you fix it?
So unfortunate that you are now having these new and unrelated problems.

Or is this really a continuation of the other thread?

It's a continuation because no one gave me a working solution.

 

[simonsi]

I have no login items

Hmmm - then you need to research any other way of launching processes at login, the major difference with Safe Mode is it disables login-launched apps.

Try creating another account for yourself, if you login there do you get the same issue?

Edit: did you reinstall the OS as per the advice for your removal of all things "adobe"?

Edit edit, just noticed you didn't respond to my other questions in that thread so not much point in carrying on this discussion....

 

[Enoch07]

Hmmm - then you need to research any other way of launching processes at login, the major difference with Safe Mode is it disables login-launched apps.

Try creating another account for yourself, if you login there do you get the same issue?

Edit: did you reinstall the OS as per the advice for your removal of all things "adobe"?

Edit edit, just noticed you didn't respond to my other questions in that thread so not much point in carrying on this discussion....

yes I get the same issue.

I reinstalled the OS because I did something that put my computer in a worse situation. (which I managed to solve)

I'm sorry about that. I as focusing on more than one forum.

 

[Dargoth]

yes I get the same issue.

I reinstalled the OS because I did something that put my computer in a worse situation. (which I managed to solve)

I'm sorry about that. I as focusing on more than one forum.

Please do this for me:

1. Open Terminal and paste the following, then press enter/return:

/Applications/Photo\ Booth.app/Contents/MacOS/Photo\ Booth

2. Report any messages you receive in the terminal here. There, hopefully, will be some sort of error message that will tell us what the problem is.

EDIT: Well, that is if Terminal is launching... Tough situation.

 

[alex0002]

Every application i use (except safari) is working. For example, if I open Photo Booth, nothing happens.

That sounds like a contradiction, but never mind...

In audacity i can open it and record things. but if i save the project, i get a beach ball and i have to force quit.

So the program starts o.k. but there is a problem when you try to save something?

I tried verifying and repairing disk permissions. That did not work. I tried uninstalling everything program on my mac (except default programs). I even went as far as reinstalling os x all together. Not even that solved the problem.

Unless you are not telling us the full story and are leaving something out, it sounds like OS X itself (including permissions) should be o.k.

The fact that you were able to reinstall OS X suggests that the disk can be written to and we should not suspect a disk problem or some other hardware fault.

However I'm wondering if the permissions of your own user home directory and subdirectories (including your user ~/Library folder) have been messed up - perhaps in your previous attempts to fix things?

Do you think this might be possible?

Can you open the Terminal?

If you can, then please enter the following commands and after each command press the Enter/Return key.

whoami

This should return your username.

pwd

This should return your home directory. e.g. if you username is user123 then we would expect expect to see something like:

$ pwd
/Users/user123

Then we can try these ones.

id

This should return the username and all the groups the user belongs to.

Now we can check some directory permissions:

ls -ld .

ls -ld ~/Library

We should find that the directory permissions match the username and the main group that was returned by "whoami" and the "id" command.

We can attempt to write a 0 byte file named "foo" in our home directory.
First check that the file doesn't already exist.

ls foo

If there is no file or directory with that name we can continue.
Otherwise we can pick a different name. e.g. foo2

Now we can try and write that 0 byte file name "foo".

touch foo

What happens in each case above?

 

[Enoch07]

That sounds like a contradiction, but never mind...



So the program starts o.k. but there is a problem when you try to save something?



Unless you are not telling us the full story and are leaving something out, it sounds like OS X itself (including permissions) should be o.k.

The fact that you were able to reinstall OS X suggests that the disk can be written to and we should not suspect a disk problem or some other hardware fault.



However I'm wondering if the permissions of your own user home directory and subdirectories (including your user ~/Library folder) have been messed up - perhaps in your previous attempts to fix things?

Do you think this might be possible?

Can you open the Terminal?

If you can, then please enter the following commands and after each command press the Enter/Return key.

whoami

This should return your username.

pwd

This should return your home directory. e.g. if you username is user123 then we would expect expect to see something like:

$ pwd
/Users/user123

Then we can try these ones.

id

This should return the username and all the groups the user belongs to.

Now we can check some directory permissions:

ls -ld .

ls -ld ~/Library

We should find that the directory permissions match the username and the main group that was returned by "whoami" and the "id" command.

We can attempt to write a 0 byte file named "foo" in our home directory.
First check that the file doesn't already exist.

ls foo

If there is no file or directory with that name we can continue.
Otherwise we can pick a different name. e.g. foo2

Now we can try and write that 0 byte file name "foo".

touch foo

What happens in each case above?

I followed everything you said. However this just looks like a bunch of code to me. Entering those commands just showed me directories and codes that I can't understand.

----------

Please do this for me:

1. Open Terminal and paste the following, then press enter/return:

/Applications/Photo\ Booth.app/Contents/MacOS/Photo\ Booth

2. Report any messages you receive in the terminal here. There, hopefully, will be some sort of error message that will tell us what the problem is.

EDIT: Well, that is if Terminal is launching... Tough situation.

All it did was open Photo Booth. The terminal did not have messages

 

[simonsi]

I followed everything you said. However this just looks like a bunch of code to me. Entering those commands just showed me directories and codes that I can't understand

....and you cant even be bothered to copy and paste the results here as requested apparently...? Of course you wont be expected to understand them, that is why you asked for help. Its remarkably difficult to help anyone who doesnt answer questions, I guess you are concentrating on those other forums again...

 

[Enoch07]

That sounds like a contradiction, but never mind...



So the program starts o.k. but there is a problem when you try to save something?



Unless you are not telling us the full story and are leaving something out, it sounds like OS X itself (including permissions) should be o.k.

The fact that you were able to reinstall OS X suggests that the disk can be written to and we should not suspect a disk problem or some other hardware fault.

However I'm wondering if the permissions of your own user home directory and subdirectories (including your user ~/Library folder) have been messed up - perhaps in your previous attempts to fix things?

Do you think this might be possible?

Can you open the Terminal?

If you can, then please enter the following commands and after each command press the Enter/Return key.

whoami

This should return your username.

pwd

This should return your home directory. e.g. if you username is user123 then we would expect expect to see something like:

$ pwd
/Users/user123

Then we can try these ones.

id

This should return the username and all the groups the user belongs to.

Now we can check some directory permissions:

ls -ld .

ls -ld ~/Library

We should find that the directory permissions match the username and the main group that was returned by "whoami" and the "id" command.

We can attempt to write a 0 byte file named "foo" in our home directory.
First check that the file doesn't already exist.

ls foo

If there is no file or directory with that name we can continue.
Otherwise we can pick a different name. e.g. foo2

Now we can try and write that 0 byte file name "foo".

touch foo

What happens in each case above?

these are the results I had

Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ whoami
savion
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ pwd
/Users/savion
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ /Users/savion
-bash: /Users/savion: is a directory
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ id
uid=501(savion) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),81(_appserveradm),98(_lpadmin),33(_appstore),100(_lpoperator),204(_developer),398(com.apple.access_screensharing),399(com.apple.access_ssh)
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls -ld .
drwxr-xr-x+ 15 savion staff 510 Feb 13 10:25 .
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls -ld ~/Library
drwx------@ 46 savion staff 1564 Feb 11 20:45 /Users/savion/Library
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ Is foo
-bash: Is: command not found
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls foo
ls: foo: No such file or directory
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ touch foo
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$

 

[alex0002]

these are the results I had

Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ whoami
savion
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ pwd
/Users/savion
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ /Users/savion
-bash: /Users/savion: is a directory
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ id
uid=501(savion) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),81(_appserveradm),98(_lpadmin),33(_appstore),100(_lpoperator),204(_developer),398(com.apple.access_screensharing),399(com.apple.access_ssh)
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls -ld .
drwxr-xr-x+ 15 savion staff 510 Feb 13 10:25 .
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls -ld ~/Library
drwx------@ 46 savion staff 1564 Feb 11 20:45 /Users/savion/Library
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ Is foo
-bash: Is: command not found
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ ls foo
ls: foo: No such file or directory
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$ touch foo
Savions-MacBook-Pro:~ savion$

Those look fine. Username matches home directory ownership and Library ownership. Plus "touch foo" didn't give an error message so you can write a file to disk.

Can you save your work to a file in any application? You said in audacity you can open the application and record things. but if you can't save the project. Where do the project files get saved to? Can any other file be saved to that same place?

I'm still thinking there must be some messed up permissions, but not the entire user home directory. Perhaps specific areas under ~/Library could be messed up too, but I'm not sure how that would happen.

 

[Dargoth]

I followed everything you said. However this just looks like a bunch of code to me. Entering those commands just showed me directories and codes that I can't understand.

----------



All it did was open Photo Booth. The terminal did not have messages

I thought you said Photo Booth wasn't opening? Your original post was contradictory, and now so is this. What exactly is going wrong? What isn't opening? Please try to make some sense and proof-read your response. This is giving me a headache...

 

[Netsurfer]

Hi,
did you try to launch applications as root?

sudo /Path/To/Application/ApplicationName.app/Path/To/Executable

that usually means

sudo /Applications/ApplicationName.app/Contents/MacOS/ApplicationName

 

[Enoch07]

Those look fine. Username matches home directory ownership and Library ownership. Plus "touch foo" didn't give an error message so you can write a file to disk.

Can you save your work to a file in any application? You said in audacity you can open the application and record things. but if you can't save the project. Where do the project files get saved to? Can any other file be saved to that same place?

I'm still thinking there must be some messed up permissions, but not the entire user home directory. Perhaps specific areas under ~/Library could be messed up too, but I'm not sure how that would happen.

I'm not sure where audacity project get saved. I try to save them to documents folder but when I click save, I get the beach ball. I can save text edit files to documents. but text edit files are the only thing I can save.

 

[Dargoth]

Pebkac

 

[Enoch07]

I thought you said Photo Booth wasn't opening? Your original post was contradictory, and now so is this. What exactly is going wrong? What isn't opening? Please try to make some sense and proof-read your response. This is giving me a headache...

Photo Booth didn't open. I meant that terminal ran the application but all it did was bounce in the dock.