troyswanson

Q: Menu bar icons continually refreshing

Every 15 seconds or so, all of the items on the right side of menu bar - including the clock, but excluding the Notification Center icon - disappear and rebuild themselves. This started yesterday when I upgraded to OS X 10.8.2. I've removed all of the third party apps from the menu bar and it is still happening.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Thanks,

Troy

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Sep 20, 2012 9:20 AM

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Q: Menu bar icons continually refreshing

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  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:02 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:02 PM in response to troyswanson

    Now, the desktop flashes gray for a fraction of a second, every ~5 seconds.

     

    This flashing resets a lot of UI stuff. For instance, if you have the dock open and the screen flashes, the dock disappears, and then reanimates back up again. Also, if you minimize something, the window disappears (without the animation), but then after the flashing happens, the window reopens with a scale-from-the-middle animation effect.

     

    These bugs have basically rendered my computer useless. All of this started happening prior to the Mountain Lion 10.8.2 update.

     

    Any ideas on how to get a handle on this would be great.

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:05 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:05 PM in response to troyswanson

    Also, Spotlight is completely non-functional. Any attempt to open the search box (either through clicking the icon or using Command+Space) causes the menu bar to reset.

  • by Nick LDN,

    Nick LDN Nick LDN Sep 20, 2012 2:14 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 4 (2,069 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:14 PM in response to troyswanson

    Do you have any third-party system preference panes installed? Or anything you may have 'tweaked' in the Dock to cause it to repeatedly crash?

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:14 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:14 PM in response to troyswanson

    Finder also crashes the instant I try to open a new window.

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:15 PM in response to Nick LDN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:15 PM in response to Nick LDN

    No, everything is pretty stock.

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:33 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:33 PM in response to troyswanson

    Most apps seem largely unaffected. Opening a browse dialog for a file attachment in Mail works as expected. After some more testing, I discovered the issues with the following UI workflows:

     

    Mission Control - The Mission Control overlay disappears and goes back to standard desktop view, however, the menu bar disappears completely. Opening up Mission Control and selecting an element before the next flash happens resets the menu bar back to its rightful place.

     

    Launchpad - The Launchpad overlay simply disappears.

     

    Notification Center - Notificaton Center just disappears, also.

     

    Command+Tab Switcher - The switcher overlay disappears and the application that you had tabbed to does not become the active app.

     

     

    Curiously, the actual menus in the menu bar (File, Edit, etc.) work as expected even through the flashes and the menu bar icon resets.

  • by troyswanson,Solvedanswer

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 2:55 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 2:55 PM in response to troyswanson

    I just installed the Mountain Lion 10.8.2 Combo package and it seems to have fixed that UI stuff. Everything still feels slower, but that might just be a psychological thing.

     

    Here's the link for anyone who might be experiencing this issue: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1581

     

    Please note that I still am not aware of the root cause of the original problems, so I have no advice on how to avoid this issue in the first place.

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 3:01 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 3:01 PM in response to troyswanson

    I lied. After about 5 minutes of use, the menu bar icons started resetting again. The gray flashing hasn't begun happening yet, however.

  • by Nick LDN,

    Nick LDN Nick LDN Sep 20, 2012 3:15 PM in response to troyswanson
    Level 4 (2,069 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 3:15 PM in response to troyswanson

    If you switch to a new, fresh user account (or the 'guest user'), does the same stuff happen?

     

    Check your crash logs in Console - something somewhere seems to be causing the Dock to crash repeatedly (which in turn takes out Mission Control, Launchpad, causes minimised windows to reappear etc.).

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 3:52 PM in response to Nick LDN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 3:52 PM in response to Nick LDN

    Hey Nick,

     

    No, a different user seems to be working without any problems; However, I just tried using the Guest account, since this computer uses an LDAP server to validate usernames and passwords.

     

    Something is certainly causing a crash, though. New records are being written in Console every time it crashes (which is like every 9 seconds or so), and I can force a crash by opening Spotlight.

     

    Here is a link to the logs that Console generates: http://pastebin.com/qwTCeFt5

    And here's a link to the "saved crash report": http://pastebin.com/SU1atABL

     

    I have no idea how helpful that is, but it's all I have for now.

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 20, 2012 3:54 PM in response to Nick LDN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 20, 2012 3:54 PM in response to Nick LDN

    Here's a crash report for Finder, too: http://pastebin.com/gBTcu6ti

  • by troyswanson,

    troyswanson troyswanson Sep 21, 2012 7:28 AM in response to Nick LDN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 21, 2012 7:28 AM in response to Nick LDN

    The gray screen flickering started happening again this morning. According to the console, the Dock is crashing about once every 4 seconds.

     

    Here's a crash report for that: http://pastebin.com/sinDatua

  • by chpeak,

    chpeak chpeak Aug 21, 2013 8:24 AM in response to troyswanson
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 8:24 AM in response to troyswanson

    disable the spotlght icon. the service will still run in the background. you're just hidng the icon.

     

    Hide the Spotlight Menu Icon in OS X

    To reemphasize, this does not disable Spotlight or mds, it only hides the icon from the menubar.

    Launch the Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and type the following command string exactly:

    sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search

    Hit return, and then you will need to kill a process called “SystemUIServer” to refresh the menubar in OS X and have the change take effect:

    killall SystemUIServer