no text in drop down menus!

Question

Level 1

1 points

no text in drop down menus!

My computer seems to be working fine except that the drop down menus show no text. In any application. I can't shutdown my computer because just empty boxes show up under the apple icon, "File" "Edit" etc.

I have restarted my computer three times and this problem has continued.

It started when I was listening to iTunes and checking my gmail when all of a sudden iTunes stopped, shutdown, and an alert box appeared with an orange triangle with an exclamation point in it, and three buttons. Only problem was there were no words in the box! And no words on the buttons. I clicked the blinking blue button, and iTunes restarted. I decided to restart my computer and discovered there were no words in the drop down portions of the menu bar. Any alertboxes that appear too, have no words in them, and I have to guess at what each button means.

Please help!!

ibook G4, Mac OS X (10.4)

Posted on Dec 20, 2006 7:25 PM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 8

35,980 points

Dec 20, 2006 11:52 PM in response to shru21

You may have to see you can SafeBoot; hold the Shift key down on start, since
that would try and repair some aspects of the system on startup; and get
you a different start screen, and in 10.4, you'd get a login window before
a desktop Finder would appear. You could maybe then run Disk Utility's
repair disk permissions, from its location in the Utilities folder; and restart.

Or see if booting from the OSX boot/installer disc can get you into the
Installer's version of Disk Utility, which can be run from the drop-down
menu beneath the Installer name once you are running from the boot disc.
You can repair disk and also repair disk permissions from there; then
choose a startup disk from the menu beneath Installer after quiting D.U.

Another idea, also a guess; would be to hold down Opt + Command +
R + P right after pressing the power button and continue to hold these
until after you hear three startup chimes; then let the four buttons go.
This reset of the PRAM may help; it may not. A menu issue could be
as simple as a permissions problem, or it may be something else.

Hope this helps find a cure, best wishes.

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Answer 2

shru21 Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 21, 2006 7:11 AM in response to K Shaffer

Well, I tried the first one, running Disk Utility from Safe Mode, and it seemed to catch some things but sadly the problem is persisting.

Can you tell me a bit more about the second and third suggestions? Drop down menus are not working -- they are showing up completely blank, as is control-clicking ("right-click") -- so I am not sure how to do the installer disc. Also, what is my PRAM? What will happen if I reset it?

Thank you so much! Just want to be careful...

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Answer 3

Dec 21, 2006 8:34 AM in response to shru21

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194

This document explains what is stored in parameter RAM. For Mac OS X, there's not a whole lot so it should be safe to reset it.

Can you "save" a file or "quit" an application by using a keyboard shortcut? Apple-s should save and Apple-q should quit.

It sounds to me like it might be a font problem. Is there any chance you moved some fonts around? It should be safe to manually move around the fonts in your own user's folder, but the fonts in the main Library or System folder should not be touched:

/Library/Fonts/
/System/Library/Fonts/

These fonts are necessary for the operation of Mac OS X and things might not work correctly if they're moved or deleted.

-Doug

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Answer 4

shru21 Author

Level 1

1 points

Dec 28, 2006 1:32 PM in response to Douglas McLaughlin

Sorry for the long delay in responding -- I was away for the holiday.

I tried the PRAM rebooting twice and nothing changed. I also doublechecked my libraries for fonts, and everything looks to be in order. I have never touched my font folders -- I don't think it has anything to do with them, because fonts all show up fine when I am actually in an application.

In case it is unclear, these are specifically the problems I am having:
1) On the desktop, there is no time or date or network signal shown in the top right corner (though the battery/AC power still displays, and I do have network access)
2) On the desktop, if I click on any of the menu bars at the top -- the apple symbol, the Finder, View, etc labels -- a big solid blank box appears with no words in it. If I move my cursor over this box, the entire thing lights up blue, and if I click, nothing happens.
3) My dock still works, and I can open applications by clicking on their icons through the dock. Firefox, Word, etc. all seem to work fine -- I just cannot use any of the menu bars, such as clicking on File, Edit, Windows, etc.
4) To close an application, though, I have to use keyboard shortcuts as the Menu bar does not work. When I use the shortcuts, the alert boxes that appear do not have any text within them -- just the outline of blank buttons.
5) Because I cannot use the menu bar, I also have to shutdown by pressing the power button. The alert box appears asking -- I assume! -- whether I want to restart, cancel, or shut down, but no text is listed within it at all! So I guess, and press the glowing blank blue button, and it shuts down.

Phew.

This is truly the oddest, and I have no idea how it occured so suddenly. I really don't believe I pressed anything, accidentally or otherwise, that would have caused this weirdness!

Any help and suggestions, are really so greatly appreciated!!

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Answer 5

K Shaffer

Level 8

35,980 points

Dec 29, 2006 12:43 AM in response to shru21

If the symptoms you state exist also while booted from the Installer Disc,
the problem may be more than a font. Since the system would be by-passed
completely and you'd be running from the booted installer disc media, the
menubars should work fine. You could run Disk Utility from the optical disc
(first disc of OSX install is bootable) and by holding the C key down all the
while you wait. With OSX 10.4, you get a fairly good Disk Utility and you
can run it to see if a "repair disk" cycle would show you any error messages
and then re-run the repair to see if it can be fixed.

The issue may just be a permissions issue and lack of routine
maintenance; unless the corruption is beyond basic repairs and
outside of what Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, or TechTool can do.
I'd try the OSX bootable installer's Disk Utility, first. A low-level
error or corruption on the hard drive may require starting over
from scratch; and D.U. can be used to start over.

If it is just a main user account issue, and if you can't use the
Admin account to make a second user account with Admin
privileges, you may have to do a system-wide restore; and
use the Installer to "archive and install" a new system to
check and see if that gives you all the menus. The whole thing
no matter which of the ways suggested, isn't that hard to try
and troubleshoot. The means to fix it are already at hand;
easier still if you don't care if you lose what's on the hard drive.

You may need to see what extent this situation exists and then maybe
plan on buying a third party disk utility to see if it can fix the problems, or
just plan on totally erasing the hard drive and use the booted disk utility to
zero the hard drive and reformat it, and do an all new installation from there.

And lose all your stuff saved on the hard drive. This is the last choice;
and if you did not back up your stuff to some other drive or media, it
would be lost. But this could make your Mac run like new again.

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Answer 6

shru21 Author

Level 1

1 points

May 4, 2007 7:33 AM in response to shru21

I ended up taking my laptop to the local Mac tech place, and they were able to fix it in 20 minutes. They just said that some fonts had been corrupted... myseterious, but at least the problems was solved.

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