Applications disappear from App folder!

This is beyond funny.
I'm the author of a similar thread that has now been archived, however the problem still persists.
I've been negotiating with Apple about this on behalf of a client of mine, that has been 'infected' by this, and I have suggested that apple will take the computer to see this themselves, however apple insists that they don't do these kind of things

It is very unfortunate that an inherently stable system like unix/apple is showing such a random and worrying issue. It is almost too strange to explain to someone that has not seen this.

Logs are absolutely clear of any indication that applications disappear, but they do!!!

If anyone has any information they want to share about any prospected resolution, they are more than welcome

HELP!

Well, this incident has inspired me to make my first posting! I recently went to look for my Mail application and it was missing. I seemed to remember a similar circumstance where I was able to find it again via Spotlight/Finder and the problem was sovled. This time it was completely gone. I am guilty of using an administrator account. The other accounts have Mail. I decided to upgrade to Snow Leopard figuring that the problem would be solved. I went back on this morning (24 hours later) and it is gone again!! Help!!!

Hi jamescarl;

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.

I am sorry to tell you that you have made a couple of mistakes here with your first posting.

Firstly, you posted your question at the bottom of another thread that is only slightly related to your problem.

Secondly, according to your profile you are running Leopard and not Snow Leopard which is where you posted.

I would suggest that you repost in the Leopard Mail Forum and start a new thread there for your question. This will get your question the attention it deserves and then you as creator of the thread have control of it.



___________________

Allan

I thought I was losing it until I found this thread. I use Macs 10 hrs a day, since they were created, various models, at work and at home, and I've never seen this. Just today, I had the same experience: about 2/3 of my apps disappeared: DevonThink, MSOffice apps, iWork apps, GuitarPro, Garageband, iPhoto, iTunes, a number of my own custom apps, Acrobat, Parallels, Chrome, Firefox, etc... But not all. Completely random. As if someone walked up to my Mac, selected a number of them, dragged to Trash and emptied. Terminal also showed they're gone, so not a Finder glitch. Question marks over the corresponding Dock icons, just like the rest of you. Curiously, GuitarPro was actually left running on another account, while its app disappeared from the Applications folder!

Repair disk found a few minor problems like always. No luck in recovering the apps tho. However, after restart, iTunes magically reappeared, but no others.

I spent the better part of my afternoon reinstalling the missing apps which seem to work fine now.

And now for the most unbelievable part: just this evening, after I restored my apps, my wife, also a long time experienced Mac user, just called down to say her Parallels app suddenly disappeared from her app folder on her iMac! I'm not making this up. Both Macs? On the same day? After years of heavy daily use without ever seeing something like this?

Interestingly, Norton reported 3 viruses on my iMac: Backdoor.Trojan, W32.Mydoom.A@mm and O97M.Tristate.C . Not sure if any of these are relevant to the issue at hand.

P.

In followup, the Norton virus scan reported no viruses on my wife's iMac, yet she experienced disappearing apps as well, so unlikely to be virus-related. Very bad news for Mac reliability.

Personally after the problems Norton caused on my Mac some years ago, I will not allow anything from Symantec into my house or on my Mac.

The only thing that I think Norton is go for is causing problems not solving them.

___________________

Allan


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Hmm. Norton. Maybe it's Anti-Virus related.

Maybe its not relevant to your case but I recall seeing a post somewhere about an anti-virus program run amok disappearing apps. I believe it was Norton but it might have been Sophos. I'm pretty sure that the anti-virus program put the aps in a quarantine folder. I don't think the quarantined aps showed up in a normal finder search but I'm not positive about that. Try a search with invisible files and system files enabled or use EasyFind with invisible files enabled to see if your deleted programs show up.

It would be impossible to overstate the evil that Norton AV has caused to Mac OS X systems

Problems on both our Macs occurred before any anti-virus program was installed. We then installed and ran Norton to see what lurks.
Point taken re anti-virus apps tho. Thx.
P.

Peter Stys wrote:
Problems on both our Macs occurred before any anti-virus program was installed.>

It would probably still be worth looking to see if the missing apps show up anywhere. Also, you might want to see if anything peculiar shows up in Console when the apps went AWOL.

Do any of you use LaunchBar, or any other launcher application? I've had this happen with LaunchBar, as a user error. With LaunchBar, you press a keyboard shortcut, then type some letters to choose an app, then press Return to launch it. But sometimes, I've been ham-fisted and pressed Delete instead, which moves the app to the Trash.

No Launchbar. Plus a bunch of them disappeared all of a sudden at the same time.