enforced restart after power outage OS 12.7.6 OS Monterey loses Menu Bar

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info. Give it Full Disk Access.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

I suggest that you look into a UPS and/or quality surge protector so that when the power does go out, you have a window of time to gracefully shut down the iMac. None of my Macs are configured to reboot on their own after a power failure as all too often, the power can go out again within a short timeframe. No point in subjecting the equipment to power bounces.

I would boot that iMac into Recovery (⌘R) mode and then run Disk Utility First Aid on the selected Macintosh HD item in the sidebar. If you do not get an OK green result, run First Aid again. Afterward, reboot normally.

Once in a great while, I mail install and run Malwarebytes, but otherwise, it is uninstalled via its help menu. I do not install junk software on my Macs such as anti-virus, or anything from MacPaw.

Hmmm, Spotlight & mdsync, a subprocess of Spotlight sem to have frequent problems.

But I'm worried about all your untoward shiut downs & how likely we have some corruption somewhere.

You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

Why is a bank dictating what software you must use on your Mac (e.g. IBM's Trusteer Rapport)? Do all UK financial institutions require this protection software installed on customer computers, and what files if any are you uploading to that institution that they feel the need for this kind of protection? Are they charging you for this software in a subscription?

You might consider updating the Adobe Photoshop Elements to the current version as the 2021 version was responsible for 17 Photoshop Server crashes.

You have a lot of software packages installed on this Core i9 iMac. Some of it is quite dated and may potentially contribute to present or future instability issues.

Try to run Diagnostics, also You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

UninstallCleanMyMac/MacPaw & Trusteer per their directions , then run etrecheck again to see what chaff it left...