flickering menu bar in mavericks

I quit out of Google drive and my flickering stopped too. So I assume that is the problem.

I quit google drive too and flickering stopped. No flickering for 1/2 hour. Just to add another name to the list.

Is this Apple or Google's fault?

Given the crappy performance I've gotten from Maverick, I'm leaning towards Apple.

I'm not using google drive but still have the same flickering screen discussed above. I haven't connected a second display as some other posts have. Just a flickering display since the upgrade. Any suggestions welcome.

This could be a background processes trying to do something that's affecting foreground focus. I'd take a look at Activity Monitor to see if there's anything that peaks in CPU, memory, or network usage every five seconds.

Don't see anything?

• Log out under the Apple in the Menu bar.
• Log in with the Shift key down. This will disable all Login Items.

If the problem goes away, it's one of your Login Items.

If you still have problems, download and run Etrecheck. Look for items in red. You can post results here.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

I have run safe boot and you are right, the system works fine ( no flickering)

quit all my login items that I can find and here is my etrecheck info

Thanks for anything you can help with

Hardware Information:

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro9,1

1 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4 cores

8 GB RAM

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 4000 - VRAM: 1024 MB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M - VRAM: 1024 MB

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0

AirPlay: Version: 1.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3

Startup Items:

HP IO - Path: /Library/StartupItems/HP IO

System Software:

OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 0 days 0:4:43

Disk Information:

APPLE HDD HTS547575A9E384 disk0 : (750.16 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 749.3 GB (469.76 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS31N

USB Information:

LaCie LaCie CooKey

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Kernel Extensions:

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2.Agent.plist

[loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist

[loaded] com.sierrawireless.SWoCTool.plist

Launch Agents:

User Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.scheduledScan.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.trashWatcher.plist

User Login Items:

None

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Flash Player

Flip4Mac WMV

Internet Plug-ins:

Default Browser.plugin

Flash Player.plugin

FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin

iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin

QuickTime Plugin.plugin

SharePointBrowserPlugin.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Bad Fonts:

None

Time Machine:

Skip System Files: NO

Mobile backups: ON

Auto backup: YES

Volumes being backed up:

Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 279.54 GB

Destinations:

Data [Network] (Last used)

Total size: 998.06 GB

Total number of backups: 112

Oldest backup: 2010-04-20 20:52:10 +0000

Last backup: 2013-10-07 03:46:48 +0000

Size of backup disk: Adequate

Backup size 998.06 GB > (Disk used 279.54 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU:

4% kextd

2% WindowServer

2% mds

1% EtreCheck

0% coreservicesd

0% SystemUIServer

0% ocspd

0% fontd

0% Finder

0% mtmfs

Top Processes by Memory:

156 MB com.apple.IconServicesAgent

106 MB Finder

74 MB mds_stores

74 MB WindowServer

57 MB CalendarAgent

57 MB SystemUIServer

57 MB com.apple.internetaccounts

49 MB com.apple.dock.extra

49 MB mds

49 MB soagent

Virtual Memory Statistics:

4.46 GB Free RAM

1.66 GB Active RAM

1.11 GB Inactive RAM

788 MB Wired RAM

179 MB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs

You should thoroughly clean your Mac of CleanMyMac.

You may have to reinstall after removing it as it may have damaged the OS.

Thanks. Think I've gotten rid of it all...

I'll boot into recovery and reinstall

Cheers

I have the same problem, but only when i try to access the menu bar from a full screen window. The menu bar comes down slow and flickery

I also had a flickering menu bar on my inactive monitor, but without Google Drive running (or even installed), and with Microsoft Word 2011. It didn't happen pre-Mavericks. Very annoying.

It may have been related to unplugging an external monitor and then plugging it back in again later.

I found that if I quit Word and restarted it, the problem went away.

Hope this helps.

Ok. So I reinstalled mavericks and still had the same flicking issue so went all out and bought a new ssd HD, installed and put a clean install of mavericks on it. When it boots to the welcome screen I still get the flickering menus and mouse movement. Strange! I put a clean install on 10.8.4 on it and it's fine.... It's a 2.6GHz i7 mbp. Just over a year old. Could my hardware be incompatible with mavericks?

Oh. I put my existing HD in a case (with the suspect mavericks on it) and booted externally on another mac and there weren't any problems...

I have similar experience, Word and Powerpoint do this. Watching the activity monitor it is notable that excel (which does not do this) is good about reducing CPU usage quickly, where ppt and wrd stay more active for longer even when not the highlighted app.

Worth noting that this behavior is also evident on the connected laptop (macbook pro).

Had same thing happen to me today... Flickering menu bar on whatever display wasn't primary (had the active window in it). Killed apps one by one, and found that it was Microsoft Outlook that was causing the issues.

Hi all, I had this problem today as well after updating to 10.9.1. The problem seems to be that the menubar process is crashing and hence that causes it to flash, as the process keeps restarting. After leaving it for a while the fans swithced on my Mac Mini. I was also completely locked out of the desktop as I couldnt even start a finder window or a terminal window.

I managed to solve it after a few hours of tinkering (took many attempts), but here are the major points.

First I rebooted into recovery mode (command+r untill the osx gives you the recovery screen) I then used a terminal widnow to navigate to the Applications folder and removed Google Drive.app (also deleted my Google Cache folder (~/Google Drive). To permanently remove a file in terminal I used rm -f, if you are not familiar with the terminal/command console please be very carefull with the rm command if you remove the wrong file/directory it can not be recovered, you can even destroy your whole osx installtion, only use if you know what you are doing.

I restarted but i was still getting the same problem, so I restarted once again in safe mode this time (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US) i believe this checks file system & clears some cache's etc... I managed to log in ok, then restarted once again and happy days the menu bar is back to normal.

Most reports of this problem I have seen today seem to point to incompatibilities between Mavericks and Google Drive and also some microsoft office products (power point, word, etc).

Good luck to all that get this problem, it was very frustrating and I lost a whole afternoon resolving it.

Uninstalling iStatMenus (http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/) version 3.? worked for me. Always worked well, suddenly started crashing in background, which causes the flicker.