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brandonpoc Author

Level 1

0 points

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.

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

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

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

^-- 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

128 replies

gfingerl

Level 1

4 points

Apr 18, 2013 12:15 PM in response to snazy

What you can do is going back to 10.8.2. Just reinstall the OS (without formating the SSD) and install 10.8.2.

This is what I did as the last step before I did a new installation.

I do understand all of your arguments, I told them apple as well.

I also want to work with my computer and not investigate on problems they introduced.

snazy

Level 1

0 points

Apr 18, 2013 12:54 PM in response to gfingerl

I'm currently trying the "no hibernation" workaround - which is a bit better than complete shutdown instead of hibernation... I have no base image (10.8.0) required to downgrade to 10.8.2 - and there's no download.

Argh! A really expensive notebook (MBPr) that is not capable of using hibernation!!!

Apr 18, 2013 1:11 PM in response to brandonpoc

Dear Everyone:

I don't think there's a solution from Apple forthcoming. This doesn't seem to effect every 10.8 user, so there's likely something we all have in common.

Let's try to collect some information about our machines - maybe something we all share will stand out. Please visit this link and answer the short survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S8HCVLV

To answer some of the questions, you will need to Click "Apple", "About this Mac", "More Info", "System Report".

I will be happy to share the results of the survey with anyone who is interested, but maybe we will notice a commonality that may lead us to a solution.

Apr 18, 2013 1:44 PM in response to Past_Tense

.. and a note about the "installed software" questions:

I included everything that *I* run - it seemed like a good place to start, and if we all have an application in common, then it will be something that I have installed - hence the short (and maybe a little weird) list of applications.

rodox

Level 1

0 points

Apr 21, 2013 9:03 PM in response to mstg

Thanks this work for me perfectly....

🙂

Okey, now I tried the following:

1. installed applejack

2. run mbr in single user mode using cmd + r

3. run applejack

4. entered return on applejack error, that its not possible to find the virtual memory somewhat

5. cleaned the plist settings global and after it for my corrupt user account

6. cleaned the cache files global and after it for my corrupt user account

7. restart

and ... tataaaa

everything works fine now

r-money

Level 1

0 points

Apr 22, 2013 2:54 AM in response to snazy

Thanks for information.

Sad to know that my solution is just workaround.

Fortunately in my case using "no hibernation mode" is advantage. It frees up extra 8Gb of small mba's 128Gb SSD and keeps out of frequent write operations.

But still, fully agree with you - the fact that "the most advanced operation system" has bug that apple is not going to fix makes me feel sad..

Level 1

65 points

Apr 24, 2013 8:54 PM in response to brandonpoc

I didn't read the whole thread (7 pages !) but a reboot in safe mode then another reboot restored my icons.

See this thread : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4172568?answerId=21866838022#21866838022

snazy

Level 1

0 points

Apr 28, 2013 8:27 AM in response to r-money

Disabling Hibernation at all seems to be a successful _WORK AROUND_ for the OS-X bug in 10.8.

Unfortunately the OS-X bug occuring during wake-up from hibernation / suspend to disk _CAN DAMAGE FILES_ and force unpredictable results.

The last time the bug occured (before I disabled hibernation / suspend to disk), it has corrupted the system. Chrome, Apple Pages and Apple Numbers could not start - all of them crashed during application startup. I had to re-install OS-X and Chrome, Pages and Numbers start successfully.

A 2600 EUR notebook that's not capable of suspend-to-disk...

gfingerl

Level 1

4 points

Apr 28, 2013 10:42 AM in response to brandonpoc

I did a complete reinstall of 10.8.3 without any applications, and since 2 weeks the bug did not reoccur. But I do know it´s still there. And I know if it happens the first time, it will occur again very soon.

@Past_Tense: Can you give us the results of the survey, I really would be interested about the commonalities.

AnonimOz

Level 1

0 points

May 3, 2013 8:54 PM in response to brandonpoc

Hola, no hablo ingles, pero he correigo el problema que comentas,

Mi solucion fue:

Entrar en modo seguro: Reinicias tu MBP, y al sonido precionas Mayus(Shift), despues de eso iniciara en modo seguro y se tardara un poco.

2.-Instalas CCleaner para mac y corres todos los procesos

3.-Instalas Onyx la version 2.6.8

Y ejecutas todos los procesos o mas bien tareas,

cuando termines, reinicia tu equipo y veras que todo estara bien!!!! e incluso en modo seguro ya aparecen los iconos perdidos en el finder y en la barra de menus 😀

Google traslate:

hello,

My solution was as follows

1 -. Start my macbook pro in safe mode, that you do it by restarting the computer and after the sound, press mayus (shift), the mac start in safe mode, start it normally, and even see that finder icons now appear like the incons from the menu bar.

2. - Download and install ccleaner, and execute all task, close CCleaner

3 -. download and install version Onyx 2.6.8 and execute all tasks, without exception, on the part of parameters you restore all values included in each tab.

4-. reboor your MBP 😀

Well that's it, it was not necessary to reinstall the system,

The problem is rather with the current user, because if you start or create another user see that everything works correctly.

AnonimOz

Level 1

0 points

May 4, 2013 4:55 PM in response to brandonpoc

Hola, no hablo ingles, pero he correigo el problema que comentas,

Mi solucion fue:

Entrar en modo seguro: Reinicias tu MBP, y al sonido precionas Mayus(Shift), despues de eso iniciara en modo seguro y se tardara un poco.

2.-Instalas CCleaner para mac y corres todos los procesos

3.-Instalas Onyx la version 2.6.8

Y ejecutas todos los procesos o mas bien tareas,

cuando termines, reinicia tu equipo y veras que todo estara bien!!!! e incluso en modo seguro ya aparecen los iconos perdidos en el finder y en la barra de menus 😀

Google traslate:

hello,

My solution was as follows

2. - Download and install ccleaner, and execute all task, close CCleaner

3 -. download and install version Onyx 2.6.8 and execute all tasks, without exception, on the part of parameters you restore all values included in each tab.

4-. reboor your MBP 😀

Well that's it, it was not necessary to reinstall the system,

The problem is rather with the current user, because if you start or create another user see that everything works correctly.

AnonimOz

Level 1

0 points

May 4, 2013 4:56 PM in response to snazy

Hola, no hablo ingles, pero he correigo el problema que comentas,

Mi solucion fue:

Entrar en modo seguro: Reinicias tu MBP, y al sonido precionas Mayus(Shift), despues de eso iniciara en modo seguro y se tardara un poco.

2.-Instalas CCleaner para mac y corres todos los procesos

3.-Instalas Onyx la version 2.6.8

Y ejecutas todos los procesos o mas bien tareas,

cuando termines, reinicia tu equipo y veras que todo estara bien!!!! e incluso en modo seguro ya aparecen los iconos perdidos en el finder y en la barra de menus 😀

Google traslate:

hello,

My solution was as follows

2. - Download and install ccleaner, and execute all task, close CCleaner

3 -. download and install version Onyx 2.6.8 and execute all tasks, without exception, on the part of parameters you restore all values included in each tab.

4-. reboor your MBP 😀

Well that's it, it was not necessary to reinstall the system,

The problem is rather with the current user, because if you start or create another user see that everything works correctly.

May 23, 2013 9:25 AM in response to gfingerl

Sorry for the delay, I was travelling, and SurveyMoney doesn't notify you when the survey is completed - I thought there were only 3 responses, when in fact 12 had built up.

Unfortunately, there are no 100% commonalities in any of the responses. Worthless, as far as I am concerned. Even the chipsets are different in most cases.

I wrote up my solution (that is still working fine 2 weeks later) here:

My report on the Macbook Pro Graphics Issue

Good luck, everyone!

-JC