brandonpoc
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Q: Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

I'm having an issue with OS X 10.8.2 on my 15" (not Retina) Macbook Pro (late 2011, Core i7 2.4 GHz w/ 16GB RAM and SSD);

 

The majority of system icons in the menu bar "extras" area (that is, to the right near the date/time in the menu bar) are blank. The area where the icon would be located is responsive to clicks, and drops a menu item down upon click, but the icons themselves are invisible. The same goes for Spotlight which has a spot for it's icon and responds to the hotkey of Apple + Spacebar, but the icon itself is invisible. The only icons that are visible are third party programs that run and place themselves there such as Little Snitch, and the battery low ("red" battery) indicator icon; other battery icons are invisible.

 

Also invisible/blank are the icons for going back and forward in a Finder window as well as the back/forward icons in System Preferences sub-dialogs. The icons for choosing labels, changing the way Finder windows display (their view options), and a few others that I cannot name as I cannot see them are invisible as well. Icons that would normally display to the left of "All My Files", "AirDrop", "Applications", "Desktop", et cetera in the Finder window do not display, either.

 

I have tried installing the 10.8.2 Combo Update and using the Disk Utility "Repair" and "Verify" Filesystem options but neither fixed the issue. I have tried deleting the cached plist files for the SystemUIServer as well but there was no change in the icon display (or, that is, lack of display!).

 

I am running Mac OS X 10.8.2 (including the Combined Update) on the late-2011 Macbook Pro 15" w/ 2.4 GHz Core i7 (default 4GB memory and 750gb HDD; upgraded to 16GB of RAM and a Crucial M4 256GB SSD). I cannot recall if the problem started after I updated any system software or not; I upgraded to 10.8.2 via buying OS X Mountain Lion from the App Store so that I would have a copy on USB to install after replacing my HDD with my SSD. Everything worked fine on fresh installation, and I am not sure at what point the icons disappeared.

 

Does anyone have any insight into this problem, and more importantly, how to correct it? Please see the screenshots below for a proper illustration of the problem I am experiencing. The sole icon visible, with the two columns, is Little Snitch 3.0.

 

Desktop-Battery-NoIcon.png

   ^-- Clicking the menu bar battery icon (except, there is no icon!)

 

Finder-NoIcons.png

   ^-- Finder window with the icons for back/forward, view options, icons for location list items on the left, etc. missing

 

General-Prefs-NoIcon.png

   ^-- System Preferences dialog, with icons for the back/forward function missing.

Help-NoIcons.png

    ^-- Help window with the icons for back/forward and some other function missing.

 

 

Thank you in advance!

 

Brandon

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 10, 2012 7:04 PM

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brandonpoc

Q: Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

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  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl Aug 21, 2013 4:38 AM in response to bart.simpson
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    Aug 21, 2013 4:38 AM in response to bart.simpson

    OK, never thought about that. But you are right: As long as it is plugged in, the problem will not occur.
    It only occurs when it is on battery and the content of the RAM has been written to the disk (flash).

  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl Aug 21, 2013 4:41 AM in response to gfingerl
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    Aug 21, 2013 4:41 AM in response to gfingerl

    On more thought:

    Maybe your explanation is alright, the point is, the problem occured with Graphic Update 2.0 (for 10.8.2).

    It was not there before, so it must have something to do with it...

  • by bart.simpson,

    bart.simpson bart.simpson Aug 21, 2013 4:42 AM in response to gfingerl
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    Aug 21, 2013 4:42 AM in response to gfingerl

    And here is another story and questiosn to others. Do you use flash or hard drive?

    I switched to flash few months ago. Maybe it's also somehow related with it. I also switched to 10.8 and switching to flash.

     

     

    OK, just to clarify.

    Anyone who experience the issue please leave a note about:

    - How many cycles of your batter you have?

    - Does the issue only happen on Mountain Lion?

    - Do you use SSD for your system and never had the issue on HDD?

  • by Past_Tense,

    Past_Tense Past_Tense Aug 21, 2013 9:45 AM in response to Volamoot
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 9:45 AM in response to Volamoot

    A clean install fixed me 100%. This was months ago, so I'm confident the problem is gone.

     

    I reformatted, re-installed OSX 10.8, and then manually brought documents and photos over to the new installation. No kexts, apps, or prefs were copied.

     

    So, yes I can confirm that a super-clean install will resolve your problem, but to do it right, you'll lose all your customizations.

  • by bart.simpson,

    bart.simpson bart.simpson Aug 21, 2013 11:06 AM in response to Past_Tense
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 11:06 AM in response to Past_Tense

    Well, then you should isolate the problem to the single app, pref, kext, whatever to see which one was faulting.

  • by Emily310,

    Emily310 Emily310 Aug 26, 2013 10:48 PM in response to brandonpoc
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    Aug 26, 2013 10:48 PM in response to brandonpoc

    I am having the same issues, all nav buttons are blank in Finder, Safari, Chrome, etc... 

     

    Running 10.8.4 on a (according to the About This Mac) late 2012 21.5" iMac 2.9GHz i5, 8GB DDR3, 1TB, GeForce GT 650M 512MB.

     

    Could this be an nVidia related issue?  Just bought it last week, should I return it and get one with a different GPU?

  • by tommypez,

    tommypez tommypez Sep 18, 2013 10:52 AM in response to Emily310
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    Sep 18, 2013 10:52 AM in response to Emily310

    Hi everyone,

     

    I'm also experiencing the same issue on my system, and this is my second complete computer that it's happening to. Right now I have a:

     

    27-inch iMac, Late 2012

    3.4 ghz intel core i7

    12 gb RAM

    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048mb

    OS X 10.8.5

     

    They (the apple store) replaced my 2011 iMac earlier this year after they couldn't solve my problem. I was having all the same issues described in this thread (the "eighties static", invisible menu and finder icons, etc.), and they replaced my graphics card and my mother board before finally just giving me a whole new computer.

     

    6 months later, I noticed the same stuff happening today - scary.

     

    Have tried all the suggestions, and the only workaround that I have luck with is to create a new user account, modify the read/write access, and access the files in my original user account through this new one.

     

    Still, Apple seems to have dropped the ball on this one - there's definitely a glitch somewhere, either in the 10.8 OS or in the NVIDIA graphics card. I don't know what else to do, but I wanted to add my 2 cents to the discussion.

     

    Class action perhaps? I've lost hundreds of dollars in time and data dealing with this crap.

  • by nerveonepro,

    nerveonepro nerveonepro Apr 23, 2014 6:29 AM in response to tommypez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 23, 2014 6:29 AM in response to tommypez

    This just started happening to me too. What is it?

  • by ruftytufty,

    ruftytufty ruftytufty Nov 27, 2015 2:08 PM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 27, 2015 2:08 PM in response to brandonpoc

    I had the same problem - system icons not showing - on 10.10.5. Not sure what I changed immediately prior to this not working.

     

    I tried deleting the SystemUIServer plist files - no change.

     

    Next, I tried booting into single user mode, but it wouldn't boot, so I booted into the Recovery Disk, ran Disk Utility > Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions. Both found and repaired some errors.

     

    But - now I can't boot from the main partition, and am worried I'm in trouble. Running Disk Utility again doesn't help, and I don't have access to my disk repair utilities for a couple of days.

     

    So, I booted to the Recovery Disk again, and ran Internet Recovery - redownloads the operating system, and leaves everything else in place.

     

    It worked perfectly - my system now boots properly, and all my icons are back. So far, no problems detected, and killed 2 birds with one stone!

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