How to Repair the Disk Permissions in OS X

1.) Click Go from the top menu bar and then select the menu option labeled Utilities.

2.) Run the application named Disk Utility in the window that appears.

3.) Once the Disk Utility application launches you will see an icon representing the hard drive(s) in your computer. The left pane is displayed in a hierarchical fashion such that the indented drive icons represent the "partitions" within each physical hard drive listed in the left pane. Select the indented partition icon that contains the OS X operating system files. If there is more than one partition listed for your hard drive such as the example picture shows, you may need to click on the hard drive icons on your desktop to determine the partition that contains your OS X operating system files. The partition with the OS X operating system files will be the one that has a folder named "System" in it.

4.) Next click the button labeled "Repair Disk Permissions". After you press this button, the button label will change to "Stop Permission Repair" which is what is shown in the example picture. After pressing the "Repair Disk Permissions" button, you will prompted to input your username and password. Once you do this press the button labeled "OK" in the username/password dialog box.

5.) The repair disk permissions task will now begin and you can monitor the progress with the progress bar in the lower right corner of the Disk Utility application window.

6.) Once the repair disk permissions operation is complete, the status box will display the text "Permissions repair complete". You may now close the Disk Utility application.

7.) Finally, restart your computer to ensure any changes made by the repair disk permissions operation takes effect.