OS X 10.11.5 Bricked My MacBook Pro Primary Account

dwmreg64 wrote:

The latest release of OS X 10.11.5, which was released today, has damaged my MacBook Pro's primary user account. That account will not log in and work properly. All application icons are now the generic icon and when you try to run one of the apps represented by this icon the Mac has this error:

You can't open the application "System Preferences" because it may be damaged or incomplete.

I'm so mad at Apple right now I could spit. This problem coupled with my now bricked iPad Pro 9.7" (from today's iOS 9.3.2 update) and I've had it absolutely had it with Apple's poor update quality and I will never ever for the rest of my life trust another Apple release. The days of trusting and immediately installing all updates are over for me. DO YOU HEAR THIS APPLE?!?!?

I'm done!

Yeah, you're not talking to Apple. You're talking to Apple users. This is a user-to-user support forum. If you feel the need, and it appears that you do, leave Apple feedback. They won't respond, but if enough people all send in comments about the same thing, a fix could appear. I don't know when, but it could.

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Too late, I installed both already, both work fine, no problems

Too late. I have the same problem as you. Did you get any resolution?

Ok thanks for the feedback. What is ur case # or may be u just post their response. Tq

This response is not really helpful. What are procedures given by apple support? I have all the problems mentioned in ur checklist

Apparently, google is faster than Apple support. For those who are having this issue, it actually happened on previous updates as well. Please refer to the following link for solution. It works for me. Good luck.

Topic:

Mac Apps Aren’t Launching, or Mac Apps Report They Are Damaged After OS X 10.11.4 Update

http://osxdaily.com/2016/03/26/resolving-problems-with-os-x-10-11-4/

For those whose OS is completely not usable like mine, the link above suggests you to create a new user. But, for my case, i can't even launch User & Group pane or Terminal window as suggested by the link. The way for me to get around with this is to open Finder then --> Go --> Go To Folder. From there type: /private/var/folders. You delete those folders as specified on the link. Restart then bingo.

Found myself in the same situation...

The Upgrade to 10.11.5 hung during the second phase - post restart of the update. I was forced to power the machine down (it had run all night spinning away merrily).

After that I could not login to the account (my user account that is a "Standard" account) that the upgrade had been run from. It would just sit at the spinning throbber after the username/password prompt forever.

Luckily I have a separate Admin level account and it would still login ok. I tried downloading and running the Combo Updater - no change.

Cloned my drive to make sure I had a copy of the files in my accounts (just in case) and found that the cloned HD would not only boot, but I could login to the primary account. That, I assumed, meant that there were temp files left behind by the failed upgrade that didn't get removed. So I ran the commands from your post and hey presto - I'm back in business, I can login just fine to the primary user account.

This fixed my issue on a 2011 Macbook Pro - Thanks!

dwmreg64 wrote:

Can you tag the post using the "Correct Answer" button for the solution that helped you please? That way it's marked for others to grab immediately. Thanks.

you started the post, so you get to choose which replies are the answer and which 2 replies were helpful.