I have a macbook pro and have lost my apple menu at the top and all my desktop icons. I am unable to shut down the computer or force quit as can't get the top bar across the top.
Any ideas
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
If you're in an app set for full screen, move the cursor to the upper left and you should see the three colored balls and the menu bar appear. Click on the green ball to exit full screen. You should have your normal desktop.
(The Dock can also be set to auto-hide. If you scroll the cursor to where the Dock normally appears and the Dock appears, you can click on an empty part of the Dock and set it to always be visible, or to auto-hide itself. That's not the cause of the menu bar disappearing, though. That's either a software or hardware problem, or—most commonly—an app in full-screen mode.)
If you're not in a full-screen app and if the Mac is well and truly wedged, then you can press and hold the power button for ~10 seconds or so to force a hard shutdown.
If your Mac is old enough to be running OS X 10.7 as is indicated by your footer, this could well also be a hardware problem, too. Hard disk drives that are failing can cause slowdowns, and hangs. And data loss.
If you don't have complete and current backups of all of your data, start with obtaining those backups just as soon as this Mac can be restarted. That's if this Mac restarts. Don't run repairs or any other activities first, as the I/O activity from those can potentially push a failing storage device over into full failure. Getting a backup of your data is more important, if you don't already have a current backup available.
If you're in an app set for full screen, move the cursor to the upper left and you should see the three colored balls and the menu bar appear. Click on the green ball to exit full screen. You should have your normal desktop.
(The Dock can also be set to auto-hide. If you scroll the cursor to where the Dock normally appears and the Dock appears, you can click on an empty part of the Dock and set it to always be visible, or to auto-hide itself. That's not the cause of the menu bar disappearing, though. That's either a software or hardware problem, or—most commonly—an app in full-screen mode.)
If you're not in a full-screen app and if the Mac is well and truly wedged, then you can press and hold the power button for ~10 seconds or so to force a hard shutdown.
If your Mac is old enough to be running OS X 10.7 as is indicated by your footer, this could well also be a hardware problem, too. Hard disk drives that are failing can cause slowdowns, and hangs. And data loss.
If you don't have complete and current backups of all of your data, start with obtaining those backups just as soon as this Mac can be restarted. That's if this Mac restarts. Don't run repairs or any other activities first, as the I/O activity from those can potentially push a failing storage device over into full failure. Getting a backup of your data is more important, if you don't already have a current backup available.
I am assuming that your MacBook Pro is running macOS Mojave ... correct? If so, has this always been a problem or just started to happen after you upgraded to Mojave? What happens if you hold down the power button your notebook ... does it power off? If so, when you boot it back up, does this issue return?
I have lost my apple menu and desktop icons
