Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

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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.

^-- 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

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Answer 1

RomanTS

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Nov 11, 2012 10:09 AM in response to brandonpoc

I have the same problem with icons in menu and application. It hapened after last updating of Mac OS X.

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Answer 2

RomanTS

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Nov 11, 2012 10:23 AM in response to brandonpoc

I have good news. Few minutes ago I tried to login in safe mode in mac os x (simply press Shift during booting) and when mac was booted in "Safe mode" I logged in my account and after rebooted to normal boot. This fixed issues.

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Answer 3

brandonpoc Author

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Nov 11, 2012 4:14 PM in response to RomanTS

I am unable to boot into Safe Mode! Aftear hearing the boot-up "dong" noise, I hold down shift. I then enter my user password in order to decrypt the hard drive as I am using Filevault v2 with full-disk encryption, and then it proceeds to show the load bar at the bottom. After a period of time, the computer reboots without launching into the Finder! This happens repeatedly until I no longer attempt to boot into Safe Mode by holding down shift. Any ideas what would cause this?

I am starting to get very, very frustrated.

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Answer 4

snazy

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Nov 13, 2012 11:10 AM in response to RomanTS

Just encountered the same problem, too.

All icons in

- menu bar (time machine, bluetooth, WLAN, speaker, battery, etc)

- Apple Mail (except the flag button)

- Safari

- Finder

- System Settings

had disappeared.

Booting into safe mode (Holding down the Shift key during (re)boot) and logging into the accout solved the problem. For saftety I opened all applications in safe mode - don't know whether this step is necessary.

After a reboot into "normal" mode all icons re-appeared.

OS is : OS X 10.8.2 - MBP/Retina

Robert

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Answer 5

snazy

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Nov 13, 2012 11:18 AM in response to snazy

I forgot to mention:

Both Google Chrome and Chrome Canary crashed regularly while the icons in OS X were gone.

Another symptom:

The issue is definitely related to user settings. Before the boot-into-safe-mode, login, reboot procedure I tried to add another user - and that user had all system icons. I tried to remove all prefernces from /Users/.../Library/Preferences - this did not solve the problem, too.

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Answer 6

RomanTS

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Nov 13, 2012 11:24 AM in response to RomanTS

Also I found that my case with issue reproduce when my mac book wake up after sleep and power cabel is disconnected.

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Answer 7

brandonpoc Author

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Nov 13, 2012 12:16 PM in response to RomanTS

I have a similar issue. When the computer goes into "Hibernate" mode -- that is, it loses power while sleeping and it writes the contents of it's memory to disk in order to boot into that exact configuration when woken up -- many of my icons when Apple-Tab'ing to another application appear as static. They look like a slightly colorized version of the "static snow" you see when tuning into a station that doesn't exist on a UHF antenna television. Also, icons in Chrome such as web sites "favorite icons" or favicon.ico (the icons that appear in the URL bar and bookmarks) will be scrambled in the same fashion , at first , until the actual icon is loaded.

Between this, my menu bar and finder icons not displaying, and being unable to boot into safe mode, I'm getting quite ******. I have no idea what the **** is going on with my Macbook Pro. The issue of the scrambled icons actually existed prior to installing an SSD and doing a fresh install of Mountain Lion. I may end up throwing in the towl and re-installing the operating system but I'm sure SOMETHING will happen. It seems the latest update, 10.8.2, is absolute garbage.

What the ****, Apple? And I really don't want to take the computer to the morons at the Apple Store. They are not "geniuses" by any measure.

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Answer 8

Nov 14, 2012 3:11 AM in response to brandonpoc

I have a similar issue too. I resolved it by renaming a user: created a new user, renamed and chowned a previous user home directory, fixed all the dangling symlinks and paths in configuration files. Takes a while, and works until the next crash, when icons disappear again.

I tried locating the relevant files, inspected or removed (where it was safe) everything that changed since before crash, but could not find anything.

To be honest, I never expected something as stupid as this from Apple. Considering installing Ubuntu on my macbook 😟

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Answer 9

snazy

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Nov 14, 2012 11:44 AM in response to snazy

The problem occured again!!!

Same symptoms: no icons & Chrome crashes.

After opening my MBP-Retina w/ 10.8.2 today, all graphics appeared garbaged.

After logging out I was not able to login again.

After a reboot the icons were gone.

Now I have to restart my laptop in safe-mode and reboot again.

Apple, you have to fix this bug! It is a bug!

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Answer 10

PJizzle

Level 1

8 points

Nov 15, 2012 8:05 AM in response to brandonpoc

I am currently experiencing the same issue. It happened immediately after doing a Flash update; which I was hesitent to do in the first place. So, now, all my Office files crash upon doing anything to them. I also had an office updat so, now, I am not too sure on what the issue is. I am going to reset the PRAM and am also doing a BitDefender scan for safe measure. Immediately after I started typing this, Microsoft Office notified me of a crucial update. I will up date this first and and then continue with the PRAM reset. I will notifiy if this is an issue fix.

I am only experiencing this on my

Mid 2010 27" iMac

256Gb SSD

16Gb RAM

2.93 quad core i7

OS X 10.8.2

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Answer 11

c warren

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2012 9:31 AM in response to brandonpoc

Some of the problems in this thread go beyond the response I have to offer; but as for disappearing icons in the "menu extras" (right side) of the Finder menu, those are controlled by the comm.apple.systenuiserver.plist in the user's Library folder. The same name may also appear in the ByHost folder, with numbers in the title. Deleting these and restarting would temporarly fix the problem - but it kept recurring. I finally traced it to the Application Switcher Menu preference pane I had added (and kept updated through 2009 when revisions stopped) years ago, and used without problem through Lion (10.7x). No problems after deleting ASM.

The whole writeup is at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4155648?answerId=19881736022#19881736022 - and it does not address problems on the left side of the Finder menu, or missing application icons.

Still, after that experience, I would look for conflicting icons, especially in 3rd party add-ons in the Finder's menu bar.

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Answer 12

Nov 21, 2012 12:21 PM in response to brandonpoc

Hi,

do you encrypt the disk ? i.e. when you boot you immediately have to identify the user and enter the password to continue booting ? if so that prevents you from using the shift key for safe booting, you need to manually overwrite the PRAM, try to google it I can't recall where I saw the exact command.

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Answer 13

Dec 19, 2012 2:17 PM in response to brandonpoc

thank god i have found this thread . I was going insane (and reinstalled my entire os twice) due to this recurring issue.

I don't have anything beyond the standard icons in the menu bar and it was dong this every time after i had hibernated my 2012 macbook pro.

The safe reboot and reboot seemed to sort it thankfully.

It's definitely user based (if i create another user and login to that it disappears)

it's also not affected by deleting preference files related to the uiserver, nor by permissions.

I can't see it being anything other than a bug personally.

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Answer 14

PJizzle

Level 1

8 points

Dec 19, 2012 2:11 PM in response to brandonpoc

Nope. Nothing worked. I can only associate mine with the flash update as far as I can tell. I reinstalled my OS. I did not restore from a backup either, I just kept all my required documents on another hard drive and moved them all back. Everything works great.

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Answer 15

Dec 19, 2012 2:18 PM in response to PJizzle

good luck.

i did that three times (reinstall the os i mean) - each time it reocurred after the computer went into hibernation.

safe reboot solution does offer a work around thankfully.

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