finder corrupt? - Strange characters in menu

The Finder menu items are represented by alphanumeric codes that should be replaced by localized strings according to your language preference. For some reason, that isn't happening in your account, and you're seeing the codes themselves. It may be because something is wrong with your language setting.

Open the Language & Text preference pane in System Preferences and select the Language tab.

If you're in the U.S., drag U.S. English to the top of the language list. If it's already there, drag some other language to the top, close the pane, then open it again and drag U.S. English to the top and close it again.

If you're not in the U.S., substitute the appropriate English variant.

Log out, log back in, and check the Finder menus.

Don't worry about the repair permissions output. You are always going to see a bunch.

At this point I'm running out of ideas. To summarize, you get the problem when:

1. You boot in safe mode. So that means it is not related to the various start up items.

2. You cleared the relevant caches (hopefully). So that is not the cause.

3. You check language preferences and have the proper settings.

The only stuff I think that's left are preference files (plists). There's so many of those finding the bad one(s) is problematic. Frankly the name of a plist that could screw up only Finder menus doesn't come to mind. You already tried com.apple.finder.plist so that one is out of the running.

Here's a radical suggestion/experiment:

What if the entire ~/Library/Preferences directory was renamed and an empty one created in its place? This might indicate if it is an errant plist for sure before trying to go out on a "search and destroy" mission (I like to call it that) trying to find a specific plist.

My only concern is that caching might cause the bad plist to be recreated when you log out.

I would recommend you back up your entire system to another drive. Then rename the Preferences directory on that backup and create the empty one in its place. That gets around the caching concern. I am assuming your home dir is on the same disk as your boot dir. So now safe boot off the backup. When you log into your account it won't have any plists in the Preferences and it will create new ones as needed.

Note, because there aren't any preferences this might "break stuff" if you try to use that stuff. That's why you need safe mode for booting. You only want to use the account long enough to see if the finder menus are stilll screwed up.

OSx86 been around for years. An open source version of OSX mainly for hackintosh's.

Repairing permissions is a waste of time, and the error messages mean absolutely nothing.

Please launch the Terminal application, copy or drag the following text into the window, and press return:

defaults read -g AppleLanguages

Post the lines of output, if any, that appear below what you entered. Then do the same with this line:

When you ran "Onyx," did you delete the LaunchServices database? I seem to remember it can do that, which is the only useful feature it has. If you didn't do that, please try it, then log out and log back in.

None of that is applicable.

This is at the point where I would almost have to go through your files one by one, which is obviously not practical. What I suggest is that you first make all files visible in the Finder, which Onyx may be able to do, and the free application TinkerTool (not "TinkerTool System") can certainly do.

Then go through the subfolders of your Library folder (the one in your home folder), either one at a time or half at a time. Move them, or their contents, to the Desktop, then log out, log back in and test. If nothing has changed, put back the files you moved and try another set. By this method you should eventually find the offending file. Some items you can skip; for example, nothing in Library/Logs or Library/Mail can possibly be involved.

It's a lot of work, but I don't have a better idea.

Remember I did mention that removing stuff like the entire /Preference folder was likely to "break stuff" and that you only want to get into the account long enough to see if the finder menus were showing correctly. I also recommended you use a backup copy (basically totally expendable) of your "real" disk. With the backup you could do all the damage you want without sacrificing the original.