Accidentally Deleted/Lost/Damaged Applications

Hi - about a fortnight back, my son found the icons for iPhoto, iMovie, etc., outside the dock and on the general desktop surface. Thinking this was Windows, he deleted them and with them the whole application. Now I find that in addition to these, both the System Preferences and Time Machine folders also refuse to open, giving a message that they may be damaged. For some reason, my Mac, which I bought recently, did not come with either the OS.X discs or the iLife disc.

How do I get back to where we were before my son got naughty?

dollym

If this was a new Mac, it came with the discs. They are often overlooked in the packaging materials. I'd look again.

If you have no backup, or your backup/Time Machine is not working, you're going to need the discs. Need to either call Apple and ask for a set of replacement discs or purchase new ones.

And with that many problems, sounds like time to reinstall everything.

If your Mac which you bought was new and from Apple, I would just call them and explain that it came without the install discs.
Otherwise, you can still call Apple tech support, and for around $20 after quoting the serial number of your machine, they will send you the original install discs.
This should also get you into the practice of keeping current time machine backups, and keeping the install discs in a safe place.

Edit: bobtomay got in there while I was typing

What os are you using?

Time machine is a pretty small app, if you could get hold of TM then the restore process would be easy

Oh, I forgot to mention..... also set up a guest account once you have fixed it so that this can't happen again

thanks. Am using Snow Leopard 10.6 I think.

guess it's best to get the discs from Apple.

actually, there are separate accounts for me and my husband and the two kids. but the problem showed up on each one of those

6string said:

Oh, I forgot to mention..... also set up a guest account once you have fixed it so that this can't happen again

Click to expand...

Make sure that at least the kids accounts are not set up as admins. Then they will not be able to delete anything that will affect any other accounts (as long as they don't have the admin password).