Mac running slow and applications won't work.

[Dragcar1216]

My mac shut off all of a sudden and now nothing will work when I restart it. When I try to open any application, the screen just goes white and the application bar just disappears and reappears. The menu/apple bar also disappears whenever I click an app.

 

[honestone]

Need to know 1) what specific Mac model you are using, and 2) the exact version of the OS that you are using.

Sounds like a possible disk issue and file permissions. Disk Utility is an OK program to help with that, but you'll need an "external" way to run it. Have you been making any backups?

 

[Dragcar1216]

1) MacBook Pro
2) OS X 10.8.5
I have not been making any backups

 

[honestone]

OK, as long as a Mountain Lion Recovery HD partition was installed on your internal hard drive, you can boot your machine to that Recovery HD partition. From there, you can run Disk Utility to 1) Verify and Repair Permissions on your "boot" partition (ie, where OS 10.8.5 and all your applications are located), and 2) Verify and Repair that same partition. Here is a link that explains all this:

http://www.macworld.com/article/116...ions_os_x_recovery_and_internet_recovery.html

There are other things you might have to do, but let's see what results from doing what I suggested above.

Once you get things working again, I strongly suggest that you start making backups. It's truly amazing how many folks on these forums do not do that. I can tell you from first hand experience (twice within the last two months, the most recent being yesterday) that a backup can literally be a life saver!