Files not previewing or opening from external drives

Having some issues after updating my iMac to Mavericks this morning - some files stored on networked drives area not opening, I just get a message saying 'application cannot be found' whenever I open a PDF, JPEG, DOC, AI, PSD ....anything!
The enclosed folders are all visable but the files will not open, either by double clicking on them, dragging onto the relevant application in my toolbar or going through the 'select an application to open this file' options. i get the same message. cover view or thumbnail view just shows blank paper icons.
worked fine before the update but not any more...any ideas? mac was bought from new 4 months ago.

I've seen a similar behaviour with an external drive. I was able to move any file I'd like into the trash but then it didn't show up in the trash bin in the dock. So I wasn't able to erase those files completely from the disk. I used the Midnight Commander (mc) within a terminal window with superuser rights (sudo mc) and found the deleted files in /Volumes/ExternalHD/.Trashes/501. The problem, I guess, was a wrong owner/group setting of the .Trashes folder on the external drive. I changed them to the same values as the .Trahses folder on my local drive and restarted the Finder. Since then everything is ok. Perhaps you can try the same, but no guarantee, that it will work! Do it on your own risk...!
Before you start, you should remember the actual values of owner/group/permissions of the .Trashes folder, in case you have to go back to the current state, if the following doesn't help. Much better would be a backup of the .Trashes folder of your external HD. Here on my system the owner of .Trashes is "root", group is "staff" and the permissions are "d-wx-wx-wt". You can change the owner/group in the terminal with the command "sudo chown root:staff /Volumes/Your-External-HD/.Trashes" and the permissions with the command "sudo chmod 41333 /Volumes/Your-External-HD/.Trashes". "Your-External-HD" should be replaced by the name of your external drive and you will be asked for your login-password to execute the sudo command. To "activate" the new settings you have to restart the Finder: cmd+alt+esc => select "Finder" press "restart".
Good luck!

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