brandonpoc
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Q: 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.

 

Desktop-Battery-NoIcon.png

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

 

Finder-NoIcons.png

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

 

General-Prefs-NoIcon.png

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

Help-NoIcons.png

    ^-- 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 7:04 PM

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brandonpoc

Q: Icons in menu bar and standard menus are invisible!

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  • by Past_Tense,

    Past_Tense Past_Tense May 23, 2013 1:57 PM in response to gfingerl
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    May 23, 2013 1:57 PM in response to gfingerl

    gfingerl:

     

    You say "without applications", but did you bring your preferences/home directory over? How clean was your re-install?

  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl May 23, 2013 2:18 PM in response to brandonpoc
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    May 23, 2013 2:18 PM in response to brandonpoc

    It was a new install including formatting the disk.

    Because I had to work on this machine I installed just a few Apps, but no Apps which installs any Kernelextensions. I also did not install any app which deals with displayresolution.

     

    I did not bring any Settings/Preferences/homedirectory over from my old system.

  • by Past_Tense,

    Past_Tense Past_Tense May 23, 2013 2:30 PM in response to gfingerl
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 23, 2013 2:30 PM in response to gfingerl

    OK, that's pretty close to what I did. Not looking forward to seeing things start to fall apart again. I'll post in this thread if I start having trouble again.

  • by Donnie26,

    Donnie26 Donnie26 Jun 13, 2013 12:37 AM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 13, 2013 12:37 AM in response to brandonpoc

    Same problem here... It started about 3 weeks ago, it just disappeared after the update 10.8.4 and yesterday it came back... This is ridiculous... Apple, wake up! a 2000$ MPBR with such a bug, I'm really not happy.

  • by mstg,

    mstg mstg Jun 13, 2013 12:32 AM in response to Donnie26
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 13, 2013 12:32 AM in response to Donnie26

    Just make sure, that your battery never runs completely out of power and if it happens use applejack -> cleanup global cache files.

  • by snazy,

    snazy snazy Jun 14, 2013 9:43 AM in response to Donnie26
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 14, 2013 9:43 AM in response to Donnie26

    I can confirm that the bug still exists in 10.8.4.

    Behaviour has not changed since 10.8.2 w/ Graphics "Performance" update.

     

    It would be very nice if some Apple engineer takes part in this discussion.

  • by Donnie26,

    Donnie26 Donnie26 Jun 16, 2013 4:51 AM in response to mstg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 16, 2013 4:51 AM in response to mstg

    Thanks for your help but I'm running 10.8 and applejack is not supported. Is there any other soft, compatible 10.8, that'd do the job?

  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl Jun 17, 2013 12:29 AM in response to snazy
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    Jun 17, 2013 12:29 AM in response to snazy

    Same here, with 10.8.4 nothing changed.... frustrating...

  • by bart.simpson,

    bart.simpson bart.simpson Aug 15, 2013 5:29 PM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 15, 2013 5:29 PM in response to brandonpoc

    A quick question. Have you disabled the swap page by:

    sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

    sudo rm /private/var/vm/swapfile*

  • by Laz_Mia,

    Laz_Mia Laz_Mia Aug 19, 2013 11:08 AM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 19, 2013 11:08 AM in response to brandonpoc

    I have been having all the same issues reported here.  Everytime the issue occured was when my laptop ran out of juice in sleep mode then went into deep sleep.  When I charged the battery and started the laptop I would lose all the user interface icons.

     

    I narrowed the issue to having a 3rd party app (Deep Sleep) to enable hibernate when I had Lion originally installed.  I upgraded to ML 10.8.x and started to have this issue. 

     

    As a temporary solution I would reboot into safe mode by holding the "shift key" during reboot.  then once logged in I would launch CCleaner and clean out all temp and junk files.  Reboot and the issue would go away until the laptop ran out of juice again and would go into deep sleep.

     

    To resolve my issue i modified the sleep settings to default:

     

    First I checked what hibernate/sleep mode I was set to using the following command:

    Command: pmset -g | grep hibernatemode

    Results:  hibernatemode        3

     

    I changed the setting to the default of 0 using the following command:

    sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

    I will ask for your administrator password, just enter the password of your account and continue.

     

    I also removed the .plist files of the offending app and made sure that there where no traces of it too.

     

    Sine making the changes I have allowed the battery to drain several times then charged it and have found that the issue has gone away (finally).  Again, this is my scenerio it may not apply to everyone but its worth checking none the less.

     

    I hope this helps, thank you.

  • by Volamoot,

    Volamoot Volamoot Aug 20, 2013 9:08 PM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2013 9:08 PM in response to brandonpoc

    does anyone know if performing a complete clean install will resolve the issue?

  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl Aug 21, 2013 4:00 AM in response to Volamoot
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    Aug 21, 2013 4:00 AM in response to Volamoot

    No, a complete install did not help on my system, i tried it twice.

     

    The only workaround available is to set hibernatemode to 0.

     

    Since a few month I have a case open with apple, but they still have no solution.

  • by bart.simpson,

    bart.simpson bart.simpson Aug 21, 2013 4:23 AM in response to brandonpoc
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 4:23 AM in response to brandonpoc

    How many cycles of battery do you have?

     

     

    PS. If you don't know how to check it, use iStat Pro.

  • by gfingerl,

    gfingerl gfingerl Aug 21, 2013 4:27 AM in response to bart.simpson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 4:27 AM in response to bart.simpson

    72. Why are you asking?

    When I am at home my Macbook is always pluged in.

    So only during my traveling weeks I use battery very often.

  • by bart.simpson,

    bart.simpson bart.simpson Aug 21, 2013 4:35 AM in response to gfingerl
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2013 4:35 AM in response to gfingerl

    This is exactly why I'm asking.

    I use in 95% my laptop plugged in. However recently I used it a way more on battery and experienced the problems.

     

    I asked about cycles as my theory is that OSX can calculates remaining time wrongly.

    Just image a simple situation:

     

    OSX gets information it's 60 seconds left and starts a hibernation process. In fact there is only 25 seconds left. So in the middle of hibernation process the battery is off and the hibernation process is done not properly.

     

    Why the information can be wrong? Well it's the same in opposite way when OSX says it's 0m0s left and you still can use the laptop for 5-10 minutes. It's just not perfect. And I think it gets worse when you have more cycles. I have 190 cycles.

     

    You can also try to run hibernation while plugged in. I tried few times and I have never experienced the issue then.

     

    And of course I can be wrong. Maybe OSX check some integration of RAM image (by calculating MD5 for example) and then recheck it with the sleepimage file. Then if the MD5 is not the same it shouldn't try to restore it. But I don't know. It's OSX, not Linux. So we can't check what really happens. Anyone knows?

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