System Information is blank?

Question

System Information is blank?

System Information in Utilities (Not in About this Mac / System Report) ... Most of the right hand pane information is missing / blank... And when a specific is hit such as RAID, which my machine does not have... I get text which is downwards scrolled....??? Anyone else?

I've tried everything to get it to work, but it remains blank.

However, if i navigate to System Information via About this Mac... it works.

Is there a way to refresh the app, via plists etc. Or would a command-r repair correct what looks to be a borked install?

Additionally, I need to note that this is the third clean install and the third time this issue has presented itself.

Any info or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Posted on Oct 20, 2014 1:58 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 20, 2014 12:29 PM in response to RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ

Bumping this as I do need some help here...

So far, I have tried resetting PRAM / SMC. Copying over the Contents folder of the App Package, with the same result. Copying over the entire app from my working MBP and still the same result... I've also created a report from the blanked out Profiler, which is fully detailed and opens as one would expect. Repaired permissions, repaired disk, reset Home Folder ACLs...

And to reiterate, if I navigate to the Profiler via 'About this Mac' it works as expected...

I'm at a loss now....

Anyone?

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Answer 2

Oct 21, 2014 2:28 AM in response to RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ

Hi, this is a bug and not a borked installation. I have found the conflict and surprisingly it is in System Preferences.

It is to do with the scroll bars.

If you have it set to Always on, as i do... It affects System Information pane and thus, renders it blank.

If you have scroll bars set to Automatically based.... System Information renders correctly. Displaying the system specifics.

Bug report and steps to reproduce filed with Apple. So if you have the same issue... It's quite easy to overcome, until a fix is issued in a future update.

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Answer 3

Shamino

Level 1

4 points

Oct 26, 2015 12:37 PM in response to RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ

Just to add another data point, if you stretch the window wider, the text starts to wrap normally. Not to the full width of the window, but wider than before. But when you quit System Information and restart it, it's wrapping too-narrow again, with the window wider than before. Repeat ad nauseum.

If, however, you make the window as narrow as possible (so the text pretty much wraps into a single column), then quit and restart System Information, and repeat this a few times, you'll see that the situation "improves". That is, you will once again be able to drag it to a normal width and see useful amounts of information.

Definitely a bug in the System Information app. Sadly, Apple still hasn't fixed it,even though it's been more than a year since this question was first posted.

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Answer 4

Reinie

Level 1

9 points

Sep 28, 2016 7:45 AM in response to RáNdÓm GéÉzÁ

I recently discovered this too (20160927). I'm still on 10.10.5 and found that stretching the window wide enough shows the information properly, but what a waste of space.

I prefer to always have the scroll bars on so I can see where I am in a long page, document, etc. Fortunately for Yosemite there is a simple solution that does not involve displaying scroll bars automatically:

From https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/180574/weird-text-alignment-in-system- information-on-yosemite

in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.SystemProfiler AppleShowScrollBars WhenScrolling

That lets you narrow the window as far as possible until the text actually does wrap, but not with the imaginary column border a character wider than one in the data part of the named value.

I haven't shut down yet to see if it holds or not after power up. If it doesn't I'll have to put the line in the bash startup script.

I still haven't figured out yet what caused it to be "narrow" in the 1st place. It used to work fine. Maybe I changed the width of the window at some point to see something behind it and then rebooted, shut down or lost battery and got shut down.

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