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Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

I'm having an issue with OS X 10.8.2 on my 15" (not Retina) Macbook Pro (late 2011, Core i7 2.4 GHz w/ 16GB RAM and SSD);


The majority of system icons in the menu bar "extras" area (that is, to the right near the date/time in the menu bar) are blank. The area where the icon would be located is responsive to clicks, and drops a menu item down upon click, but the icons themselves are invisible. The same goes for Spotlight which has a spot for it's icon and responds to the hotkey of Apple + Spacebar, but the icon itself is invisible. The only icons that are visible are third party programs that run and place themselves there such as Little Snitch, and the battery low ("red" battery) indicator icon; other battery icons are invisible.


Also invisible/blank are the icons for going back and forward in a Finder window as well as the back/forward icons in System Preferences sub-dialogs. The icons for choosing labels, changing the way Finder windows display (their view options), and a few others that I cannot name as I cannot see them are invisible as well. Icons that would normally display to the left of "All My Files", "AirDrop", "Applications", "Desktop", et cetera in the Finder window do not display, either.


I have tried installing the 10.8.2 Combo Update and using the Disk Utility "Repair" and "Verify" Filesystem options but neither fixed the issue. I have tried deleting the cached plist files for the SystemUIServer as well but there was no change in the icon display (or, that is, lack of display!).


I am running Mac OS X 10.8.2 (including the Combined Update) on the late-2011 Macbook Pro 15" w/ 2.4 GHz Core i7 (default 4GB memory and 750gb HDD; upgraded to 16GB of RAM and a Crucial M4 256GB SSD). I cannot recall if the problem started after I updated any system software or not; I upgraded to 10.8.2 via buying OS X Mountain Lion from the App Store so that I would have a copy on USB to install after replacing my HDD with my SSD. Everything worked fine on fresh installation, and I am not sure at what point the icons disappeared.


Does anyone have any insight into this problem, and more importantly, how to correct it? Please see the screenshots below for a proper illustration of the problem I am experiencing. The sole icon visible, with the two columns, is Little Snitch 3.0.


User uploaded file

^-- Clicking the menu bar battery icon (except, there is no icon!)


User uploaded file

^-- Finder window with the icons for back/forward, view options, icons for location list items on the left, etc. missing


User uploaded file

^-- System Preferences dialog, with icons for the back/forward function missing.

User uploaded file

^-- Help window with the icons for back/forward and some other function missing.



Thank you in advance!


Brandon

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 10, 2012 7:02 PM

Reply
128 replies

Feb 1, 2013 6:15 AM in response to gfingerl

That's interesting that you have graphics update 2.0 available to you separately then the 10.8.2 update. I decided to update to 10.8.2 and thought maybe the graphics update 2.0 would show up after-the-fact allowing me to have the latest update but not also install the graphics update. I updated last night to 10.8.2 and the problem with the graphics and hibernate showed up almost instantly. So now I'm going back to 10.8.1 and I'm going to stay there until 10.8.3 is released. I would advise anybody who's bought a MacBook Pro 13 inch in the last few weeks to stay on 10.8.1 until 10.8.3 comes out. That's my two cents at least.


Andrew

Feb 1, 2013 4:06 PM in response to myalteregohamish

In the past I had to re-install OSX 10.8 about 6 times.

The last time I tried the following:


- New install over existing system. _No_ clean install, I kept all of my existing files.

- Installed every update that was available but:

- I did not install the Update "MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 2.0 2.0" (Grafix and Performance Issues)


Now I have not the problem, that my system icons disapear

and I have also not the problem anymore, that the system does not awake from sleep.


My System:

MacBook Pro 15 Retina Mid 2012

2,3 i7

16 GB

Intel HD 4000 512


Hope that helps.

Feb 2, 2013 6:44 AM in response to mstg

Hi,


I can confirm that reinstalling OS-X from the recovery partition without the "MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 2.0 2.0" (Grafix and Performance Issues) solves the problem.


It is blasphemy to say that an update improves graphics performance when graphics and system stability will suffer when that update is applied.


MBP/Retina 15", 2.6" i7, 16GB


Current configuration:

- OS-X 10.8.2

- all updates without "MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 2.0 2.0"


Apple: You should immediately withdraw the buggy update, fix it and re-issue it!

Feb 3, 2013 2:53 AM in response to snazy

@snazy

thx for this advice .. I'll try this as I experienced what e.g. Past_Tense, gfingerl experienced:

Save Boot mode works fine .. for some minutes but "unmotivated" the effect disappears and you are in trouble again.


Especially with the MTL and my retina I really needed an extra APP to adjust display resolutions as apple removed the prcise ones (Pixels x Pixels) by some glyphic unclear stuff like "good resolution" "best fit" which really does not help too much. The APP from the store "Display Menu" (free !!!) is great, but is an "login Item" due to disappear caused by apples OS bug.


We'll see if the restore solves it ... but not today ;-)

Feb 3, 2013 3:10 AM in response to JPG_master

Amendment:

I just updated the "Display Menu" APP and the new Version now fits to "Apples Sandbox Guidelines" (whatever that is) causing the APP not anymore to appear in the LIST of the Login Items (some PLIST file that seems on failure to be overwritten by the OS - so identified in else discussion threads) BUT now starting and appearing in the Menu Bar.


Others still dont => two issues: one could be solved by the programmers themselves (Sandbox - see above), the other is obviously what snazy et al mentioned: the bug in MTL OS.

Feb 3, 2013 12:21 PM in response to brandonpoc

Is there no way to uninstall the individual updates? Coming from the Windows world, that was always a back-out option incase something goes wrong. you had control over each update and could uninstall one if you wanted.


Having to do a full system reinstall (3+ hours on my MBP15) again would be a huge waste of time, I've already done it 2 times... I have real work to do you know. I thought this was just supposed to work and be simple. Sorry for the rant, but I'm getting really fed up with OSX in a work environment.

Feb 3, 2013 12:39 PM in response to RSouthern

There's no (known?) option to uninstall that buggy update.

Just reinstall from the recovery partition (which keeps all your applications, files and settings - I think Windows does not support unproblematic OS reinstall while keeping apps files and settings), install all updates EXCEPT

"MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 2.0 2.0"

But I strongly recommend a full backup (which is quite easy with Time Machine - another thing that Windows does not support out of the box).

Feb 13, 2013 11:54 AM in response to tutenchamun

Hi,


ref my post above.


Funny is, that this free App "Display Menu" now has fixed it at my maschine - after it's compliance adoption.

As long as I do not open User admin / Login items .. all works as expected. Many boots since that happened .. all fine.


Of course on my machine. maybe other configs might fail. AND .. I was close to re-install from recovery.

(btw .. I will try to check opening the User admin / Login items and post results here)


Try the app and tell others abour YOUR experience .. mine currently makes my satisfied.


Cheers

Feb 14, 2013 1:47 AM in response to JPG_master

I called apple support today.

I've explained the issue and possible fixes in detail, I veen have referred to this thread.


Apple said, its the first time they hav heard of this - and they cannot reproduce it.


They have finaly suggested to try a different account.

In the end I was told to wait for an update.

But this was not specific at all.


At least there maybe is some attention on it.


That issue needs more attention - so I suggest that U all call them, or raise bugs ... maybe we will be heard.


"may the icons be with all of you ... "

Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

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