Mail has a question mark, but I didn't delete it

[one1]

I'm no stranger to my iMac and my plan to resolve is to reinstall mail.app from disc, but I'm curious if anyone has any info on how this could have happened to prevent it from happening again. My iMac has been flawless for years, nothing has changed with it system wise since it's normal updates. Today I tried to click mail from the dock and it showed the darkened question mark over it to alert me the app was not found on the shortcut.

I'm baffled as to how I can walk away from the iMac and come back to this if I didn't do anything. I verified and fixed disk permissions to no avail. I cannot find mail.app in the applications folder.

I'm concerned there may be an issue with security since it has done this without my interaction. Does anyone have any possible explanations?

I dual boot 10.6 and 10.7 and this issue is with 10.6, which I simply prefer.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Is Mail still available in the Applications folder (Finder > Go > Applications)?
If so: Restoring items to the Dock

If not, did you try a search on your 10.6.8 partition?

Otherwise you can download this one, it is from 10.6.8.

 

[one1]

Thank you, more information: I have since found that VisualHub and LS have also been crippled buy the same issue. None can be found in the applications folder and have a dark question mark in the dock when you try to access them. I seem to be losing applications! None can be found in spotlight.