Possible Permissions Issues

[didgan]

Hey all!

First post here, so here goes nothin:

I'm a World of Warcraft player and I was doing a complete copy of the enitre WoW folder in order to play on 2 accounts at once. This was a long time ago but I'm pretty sure what happened is that it never finished copying and became an 'incomplete' file; whenever I would try and delete it, it would say it is 'currently in use' and wouldnt delete. I also noticed it was making my startup and any navigation within my HD/finder very slow and difficult. Now, being the idiot that I am, I was looking for ways to take care of the problem myself, although I have little knowledge of the OS. Again this was long ago (shotty memory) but I wound up using the program called Terminal to log in as the 'root' user and change my permissions (I think) to delete the file. This was successful and my computer was running back up to speed and everything.

Here's my problem (after a long intro, sorry):

Things such as TextEdit, Calculator, and other basic tools that come on the system seem to be no longer active. Their shortcut icons have all been changed to that white rectangle with a protractor(?) in the shape of an 'A' in the bottom right corner.

I can't access my system preferences; when I click on it, it just blinks whatever window I have open real fast, and doesnt open System Preferences. I think it might be openening it for a fraction of a second but automatically closing.

Another thing I noticed was that I put some mods/addons into my interface folder in WoW, and they aren't even being detected or recognized.

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks for taking the time to read my superlong post =) I'll be checking back promptly for replies.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[didgan]

i'd like to add that I'm running OS X 10.6.9

 

[Satcomer]

i'd like to add that I'm running OS X 10.6.9

???? Did you mean 10.3.9?

 

[VirtualTracy]

Things such as TextEdit, Calculator, and other basic tools that come on the system seem to be no longer active. Their shortcut icons have all been changed to that white rectangle with a protractor(?) in the shape of an 'A' in the bottom right corner.

Check that the apps you mention are still in your Applications folder and try to launch them from there. Are the shortcut icons in your Dock? If your apps launch from the Applications folder, then look in your Dock and the icon should represent the parent app. You can Ctrl/Right-Click the Dock icon and choose to keep it there. This should replace the broken shortcut (if that's the case) with a fully working one.

 

[didgan]

Edit: The icon for all of these apps is a pencil, paintbrush, and ruler in the shape of an 'A'. When I apple+click and go to get info on any of them, under 'Size' is says 'Calculating Size'. That seems weird to me.


Yes, I did mean 10.3.9, sorry.

As far as the apps are concerned, the same icon appears for all of them in my folder as well as on my dock. I'm probably going to take my machine into the local Apple Store soon, or try to talk to someone at the Genius Bar over the phone or something.

I honestly thought it was 10.6.9 at first because I can't access anything from my Apple Menu.

Thanks for the replies!