Disappearing Menu Bars and Inability to Select Items

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Level 1

28 points

Disappearing Menu Bars and Inability to Select Items

I have a 2016 27-inch iMac, and today I arrived at the office with the menu bar did not appear on the desktop after startup. I restarted the computer but the menu bar did not return and at startup I received the following message “Your Mac was restarted because of a problem,” and after that the menu bar did not appear. I also cannot select files or if I do manage to open a file, I cannot close it or input data or make windows active. Clicking on a close button on a window will sometimes work.

I installed the Monterey 12.3 update, and that seemed to solve the problem. But I wanted to make sure that it was solved, so I restarted the computer at the end of the day. Again, during startup I received the “Your Mac was restarted because of a problem" notification, and when the reboot finished, the menu bar again didn't appear.

Does anyone know why this is happening and what can be done about it?

iMac 27″, macOS 12.3

Posted on Mar 15, 2022 9:18 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Will_G_Astro

Level 3

590 points

Mar 16, 2022 2:21 AM in response to a1000faces

Hi a1000faces.

Carry out a SMC reset followed by a PRAM/NVRAM reset and finally a Safe-Mode boot.

These three steps taken together will normally solve problems such as these and are a prerequisite before delving deeper into hardware and software.

Note that you don’t need to do anything with the Mac during the Safe-Mode boot other than start the Mac in Safe-Mode, allow the Mac to boot to your user desktop, leave the Mac alone for ten minutes while hidden background processes complete and then restart the Mac normally. A Safe-Mode boot is slow and mouse and keyboard response appears “laggy”, this is normal while in Safe-Mode, please be patient while starting and operating the Mac in Safe-Mode.

You can read further how to carry out the SMC reset, PRAM/NVRAM reset and Safe-Mode operation in these three links:

How to reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

How to use safe mode on your Mac – Apple Support (UK)

If, after carrying out these three steps the problem continues, please run the free version of Etrecheck and attach a copy of the Etrecheck report, using the additional text box at the bottom of the reply window, to load a copy of the report when you compose your reply.

The Etrecheck scan and report will show if you have any third-party software installed that may be incompatible with the macOS and other issues with the Mac hardware. The report itself does not reveal private information and is run directly from the download, it does not require installing.

Please be sure to allow Etrecheck full disk access in Mac Security and Privacy settings otherwise it will not be able to detect common software incompatibilities that resides below the user environment level.

https://etrecheck.com/

After you provide the report the more experienced forum members here will be able to suggest the most appropriate steps to take next.

HTH.

Will.

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Answer 2

a1000faces Author

Level 1

28 points

Mar 16, 2022 9:03 PM in response to Will_G_Astro

Thank you for your response. Earlier today before I saw this reply, I tried the reset of the SMC, reset of PRAM and booting in Safe Mode. None of those steps worked unfortunately. So I opted for a wipe-and-restore. Once it's restored, I will see how long it goes before it happens again as this is the second time it has happened.

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Disappearing Menu Bars and Inability to Select Items

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