Half my apps have suddenly disappeared

[Stuart444]

Many of my apps have suddenly disappeared from the main screens of my Galaxy Note 1 running Android 4.1.2. The are all in the phone memory - apps on the SD card are still working normally. I've also lost play store and the browser. In app manager they seem to be in the list of apps but they are greyed out, and some start with an odd name like com,android..... or just com....
Can anyone tell me what's happened and how to fix it please?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Try wiping the cache partition, which won't erase any personal data. The steps for the Note 2 should work for the original Note: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-6768

 

[Stuart444]

Thanks for the answer - the procedure seemed to work OK on my Note 1, but alas it made no difference - all the original symptoms persist. I guess I could do a hard reset - there's no personal info on my phone to worry about, just the time needed to re-install all the apps and organisation thereof.

 

[B. Diddy]

You could also use Kies to reinstall the firmware.