Full restore from backup, /Applications not backed up I recently had my hard drive replaced. I made sure my Time Machine backup was up-to-date prior to the handing it over to the Apple Store so I could simply restore, but I made one mistake: /Applications was not being backed up with Time Machine.

I got my computer back today, and I now have a fully restored iMac less /Applications. This means the Dock is full of question marks... I have nothing. I'm typing this from the restore partition where I don't see any way to replace /Applications.

All I can think to do from here is start with a fresh install and work from there. Any ideas before I go down that route?
If you hadn't backed up Applications, you're stuck there. But you should be able to just go and reinstall the applications. When you do, the dock will be normal again and you'll have the benefit of keeping your settings and everything else. No need to wipe the whole thing and restart.