Help! System Pref, Disk Utility, Terminal etc won't open!

[Altn8]

Hi guys new to this forum here, had to sign up to seek help.

All of a sudden out of nowhere System Preferences would bounce once and then not open. I tried App Store as well, same thing. Disk Utility? Same thing. Terminal? Same thing. I have tried almost everything I've seen in these forums ie. Plist removal, boot disk mode to run disk utility and run a first aid, safe mode. Alas, to no avail. Nothing will work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Weaselboy]

Are other apps doing this also like Safari and Mail or iTunes for example, or is it only the apps you listed?

What year and model Mac are you on?

Can you think of any hardware change you made lately that may have led to this?

If safe mode did not fix it, that points to a hardware issue like perhaps a failing drive or maybe a bad drive cable. Safe mode stops all launch and startup items, so that would eliminate that as the issue.

 

[Altn8]

Are other apps doing this also like Safari and Mail or iTunes for example, or is it only the apps you listed?

What year and model Mac are you on?

Can you think of any hardware change you made lately that may have led to this?

If safe mode did not fix it, that points to a hardware issue like perhaps a failing drive or maybe a bad drive cable. Safe mode stops all launch and startup items, so that would eliminate that as the issue.

Hi thanks for your reply. It's only the apps listed, I can still access Logic 9 and X, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. my iMac is a late 2010 iMac. At work right now so don't have access to too much info. The one thing I haven't tried is Onyx. Reckon that'd be worth a shot?

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi thanks for your reply. It's only the apps listed, I can still access Logic 9 and X, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. my iMac is a late 2010 iMac. At work right now so don't have access to too much info. The one thing I haven't tried is Onyx. Reckon that'd be worth a shot?

If other apps were doing this, I would think a failing drive, but only the ones you list are doing this and all others continue to work fine then? Very odd.

I don't see how Onyx could do anything to fix this.

What you might try is making sure you have a good backup, then command-r to recovery and just do an OS reinstall without erasing the drive. That will not remove any of your data and may fix the corrupted apps. Still troubling how they got corrupted to begin with though.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Have you tried shutting down (power ALL THE WAY OFF), and then restarting...?

 

[Altn8]

OP:

Have you tried shutting down (power ALL THE WAY OFF), and then restarting...?

Sorry about delayed reply. Yes, I have tried that. I just got a new iMac, I wiped the old one and reinstalled OS X, the problems weren't there everything is fine. Currently restoring new iMac with time machine back up. See what happens...