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macrumors newbie Join Date: Sep 2003 | I have items in my finder menus that have changed to numbers. Example: cut is ME1, Empty trash is A3. The issue seems to keep expanding to new menu items as well. My sidebar lists my hard drive as SDS, time machine as SD6, and places as SD8. My command click menu has numbers in place of items as well. I keep finding new things changing. What may be causing this problem problem? |
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Does the problem remain if you restart the computer? does it occur if you create a new user account and log into that? it sounds like a haxie gone mad, but...
Normal things do not work, ie: restart, repair permissions, trash preferences file and restart. And no haxies on this computer; nothing abnormally installed lately.
Did you create a brand new user account and log into it? did you try restarting in safe mode (hold down the shift key during restart)? Have you repaired the volume using Disk Utility? These are important diagnostic steps. If you just want a quick and dirty fix, reinstall the system; if you want something less drastic, you need to try these things and tell us what the results are.
Restart to safe mode and repairing volume gets no new results, but a new user account corrects the problem.
That means it's something wrong in your home directory. My first suspect would be a corrupt preferences file (when, for instance, the Finder preference file gets mangled, odd effects of this sort can happen). Try moving your preferences folder onto the desktop and restarting. the system and apps will new preference files on restart - you'll lose all your settings temporarily, but if the menus work properly again you know it's a corrupt plist and you can start testing likely culprits. (don't forget to move your preferences folder from the desktop back to its original position).
You might want to look at this discussion (which basically started going down the same path this thread is taking), or more importantly this discussion.
There's a number of posts like yours and it appears it may be related to a Flash Installer Trojan floating around. See this article for example.
I really think this is my problem (flash trojan). I followed this :
Download the ClamXav anti-malware application and run it. It should find the trojan and remove it. If not, you'll need to remove at least the following files from your home folder, then log out and log back in:
ClamXav did not find anythingthing, and deleting the above items caused my mac to not boot, so I am still working on the correct fix.
deleting the above items caused my mac to not boot
Those items are all local to your home directory. So deleting them should not have prevented you from booting. The worst case could only be preventing you from logging into your account. But IMO those items wouldn't prevent that either.
Moving my preferences folder out of my home directory did the same thing - restart froze up. I am going to try these things again soon, maybe one at a time.
Can you clarify #1 and #5 on the list - I do not see either of these:
1 is a finder invisible file (all files beginning wit a dot are usually invisible although you can overide that in the finder using something like OnyX or Tinkertool). 5 would be visible if it is there unless it was made finder invisible.
A quick and easy way to remove them and not worry about seeing them is to just delete them using the following terminal command (cut/paste the following line):
rm -rf ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/swlog
You shouldn't see any messages when doing these.
YES! Success. It all worked perfectly and corrected the problem. Thank you so so much for your patience and time to help. I am so glad to get this one solved.
huffdesign wrote:
YES! Success. It all worked perfectly and corrected the problem. Thank you so so much for your patience and time to help. I am so glad to get this one solved.
I think there is pretty solid evidence now that the name gets changed during installation. I would like to know what it currently says. Please open it up with Console, which is in /Applications/Utilities/ or with TextEdit. If it's text then copy and paste it here. If it's garbage then Trash it.
X423424X wrote:
deleting the above items caused my mac to not bootThose items are all local to your home directory. So deleting them should not have prevented you from booting. The worst case could only be preventing you from logging into your account. But IMO those items wouldn't prevent that either.
That has happend to at least three other people who went through this. Nobody seems to know why, but restarting a second time seems to solve it.
That has happend to at least three other people who went through this. Nobody seems to know why, but restarting a second time seems to solve it.
Hmm, I can't conceive how that can happen. But you've been tracking this problem closer than I have so I accept what you say. It be nice to know, however, how it could happen, if for no other reasons than for our own enlightenment. (fouled up cache perhaps?)
Drop down menus changed to numbers
