El Capitan: You can't open the application 'app name' because it may be damaged or incomplete

Linc! You are GREAT man. After 2 months fighting I've just repair my system disk with great difficulty recovered after a disk utility fixing it joined this partition with another one from second disk into one raid partition. I tried EasyRecovery without any success, and only r-studio with the subsequent interference diskwarrior allowed again to see the correct partition, although only on a single disk. But system was very slow and I could't run any application. I still have problem with right recovery of second disk with too partitions: one with Lion {now successfuly recovered], and second: with Mountain Lion. R-Studio allow me to see partition I'm looking for with right size, but when I try to make an image of it it's oversized and after dumping to a new disk - it's useless. I can recover more of my data, but not the whole system partition. Any idea?

And one more question. It seems, that only system applications in dock have default icons (brash and pencil in "A"shape symbol). Do you have any advice to resolve this problem?

Unfortunately, the icons in the Applications folder are also default.I have this problem with:
App Store, Automator, Calculator, Calendar, Chess, Contacts, Dashboard, Dictionary, DVD Player, Face Time, Font Book, Game Center, Image Capture, Launchpad, Mail, Maps, Messages, Mission Control, Notes, Photo Booth, Photos, Preview, QuickTime Player, Reminders, Stickles, System Preferences, TextEdit, Time Machine,
and with Ulilities folder:
Activity Monitor,
Some of theme work (i.e. Preferences, Time Machine), some not (Gmail, Activity Monitor)

I copied broken files from another computer and everything looks fine now. But every time I try to open combo 10.11.6 installer, my system slows down very much. Of course, in effect I can't finish this, because of the message that it is not allowed for my disk. When installation is stopped - system is once again healthy.

Linc, may I ask: what happens if that ”zz” folder is deleted? In fact, I deleted the entire ”folders” folder by mistake in order to fix a startup issue on my sister's computer and that solved it (after I manually created a ”folders” folder from another Mac with the problematic one connected via Target Disk Mode), but now after a couple of days of use she started to get this ”You can't open the applicaion…” error for every app.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Linc, thank you so very much for this. I just updated a machine here at work and had this very issue, on my account. Normally, I let our JAMF system do the updates, but there were a few pending and I was restarting for another reason anyway. Kind of embarrassing for the Mac administrator (me!) to be unable to access applications in his own account. Fortunately, there are several other admin accounts I could use to effect the fix.

Again, thanks!

Hi Linc,

My partner is having this issue with his account and I'd like to try doing this method to fix the issue (hopefully), can this be done through my account on the Mac or will it need to be done through his account? Both are administration accounts.

Do you have this problem now?

Please launch the Console application in any one of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then take an action that isn't working the way you expect. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

This procedure will delete certain temporary and cache files. The files are automatically generated and don't contain any of your data. Occasionally they can become corrupt and cause problems such as yours.

Please back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

/var/folders

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Open

from the contextual menu.* A folder with the odd name "folders" should open.

Inside "folders" are several subfolders, each with a two-character name. Drag all the subfolders except the one named "zz" to the Trash. Don't delete the subfolder named "zz". You'll be prompted for your administrator login credentials.

Restart the computer and empty the Trash.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Thank you, my friend!! You saved me sunday! This worked for me. problem was starting a terminal but after 20 Minutes Spotlight opened a terminal for me.

Greetings

Walter

Thanks Linc, this helped me as well. After the 10.11.6 Security Update 2016-001, my primary user account was stuck at login in a lsd - CrashReporter endless loop. I tried a number of things, but going to /var/folders and deleting everything except the zz folder solved it for me.

LL