strange menu, font, finder, and dock problem
I have seen this problem only once before. Oddly enough, it was on my dad's G5 running 10.4.8. I am having this problem on a G4 with 10.4.9. Both of us use the Final Cut 5 Studio Suite.
My father's problem began after a reboot of the computer (for what reason he rebooted, I do not remember).
My problem occured after exporting a final cut sequence to a quicktime move with all current settings (something I have done several times before). I quit Final Cut Pro. The next thing I know, the Finder begins repeatedly relaunching itself. I was able to catch a point where the computer would let me restart.
After restarting I booted directly into single user mode. I ran "/sbin/fsck -fy" and it found and fixed some errors. Just like my dad's G5, when the computer came back up, the problem was there.
First thing you notice is that where there should be text there is not. On the login window, it will not show names of users. It just shows pictures. (Thank you Apple for putting user pictures in the login window!) When you select an account, it gives you the password dialog box. When you start typing, instead of seeing the bullet symbol ( • ) for each character, it is completely blank. Various buttons and other things are also missing their text.
When the system logs in and brings you to the Finder and the Desktop, the menu bar is missing all text.
Even though the menu bar is missing text, the menus are still there. However, the menus are both missing all text as well as each menu item is the entire length of the screen height. You can actually scroll through the menu with the up and down arrow keys, but it does not look like it. It looks like you have just highlited a menu item that is taking a large chunk of your screen. You also have to know where the menu items are in the menu in order to select the right one. Fortunately, I have used OS X enough to be able to blindly select the restart, shutdown, and logoff menu items from the apple menu. And command key sequences help immensely.
When I ran into this problem on my dad's computer, the fix was two fold, but ended up being simple in the end. First was that I got rid of all of the cache files in the system. That did not fix the problem of the menus, but the text came back for everything else with an incorrect font. Second, was I noticed recent modification dates to the quartz frameworks via apple system profiler. So, I used Pacifist to extract/replace the quartz frameworks with fresh copies that were in the 10.4.8 combo update pkg file.
This worked just fine for him. His system was up and running with no problems. I will post screen shots if anyone needs them.
On my system, however, these fixes and more have not worked. The font is still the wrong font. My fonts folders have the correct fonts in them per Apple's article
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301332
Now my dock will not show up and is not even running per activity monitor. If I double click on a hard drive icon on the desktop, the Finder relaunches. However, I can double click on CD or DVD icons or disk image mounts that open just fine. The menus are still not useable in any application. I tried to launch final cut. It loads, but then just goes away without a crash report. Some programs will load. I can also press command-n and a new finder window will open just fine. I can use spotlight to search for something and open a program as well. Terminal, Activity Monitor, disk utility, and a few others open just fine. I tried repairing disk permissions. This went through, but did not correct the problem.
I ran the full 10.4.9 combo update again. It tooks its time in processing and the log indicated that it actually did attempt to install some things. This did not seem to help. I used Pacifist again to replace the Application Services framework with the one in the 10.4.9 combo update. No good. I have trashed third party startup items and kernel extensions. No good. I even replaced the Finder.app and Dock.app (and corrected permissions) with copies from my powerbook running 10.4.9.
I am stuck. Any ideas or help out there? I do not want to do an archive and install.
G4 dual 1.3Ghz 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9)
My father's problem began after a reboot of the computer (for what reason he rebooted, I do not remember).
My problem occured after exporting a final cut sequence to a quicktime move with all current settings (something I have done several times before). I quit Final Cut Pro. The next thing I know, the Finder begins repeatedly relaunching itself. I was able to catch a point where the computer would let me restart.
After restarting I booted directly into single user mode. I ran "/sbin/fsck -fy" and it found and fixed some errors. Just like my dad's G5, when the computer came back up, the problem was there.
First thing you notice is that where there should be text there is not. On the login window, it will not show names of users. It just shows pictures. (Thank you Apple for putting user pictures in the login window!) When you select an account, it gives you the password dialog box. When you start typing, instead of seeing the bullet symbol ( • ) for each character, it is completely blank. Various buttons and other things are also missing their text.
When the system logs in and brings you to the Finder and the Desktop, the menu bar is missing all text.
Even though the menu bar is missing text, the menus are still there. However, the menus are both missing all text as well as each menu item is the entire length of the screen height. You can actually scroll through the menu with the up and down arrow keys, but it does not look like it. It looks like you have just highlited a menu item that is taking a large chunk of your screen. You also have to know where the menu items are in the menu in order to select the right one. Fortunately, I have used OS X enough to be able to blindly select the restart, shutdown, and logoff menu items from the apple menu. And command key sequences help immensely.
When I ran into this problem on my dad's computer, the fix was two fold, but ended up being simple in the end. First was that I got rid of all of the cache files in the system. That did not fix the problem of the menus, but the text came back for everything else with an incorrect font. Second, was I noticed recent modification dates to the quartz frameworks via apple system profiler. So, I used Pacifist to extract/replace the quartz frameworks with fresh copies that were in the 10.4.8 combo update pkg file.
This worked just fine for him. His system was up and running with no problems. I will post screen shots if anyone needs them.
On my system, however, these fixes and more have not worked. The font is still the wrong font. My fonts folders have the correct fonts in them per Apple's article
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301332
Now my dock will not show up and is not even running per activity monitor. If I double click on a hard drive icon on the desktop, the Finder relaunches. However, I can double click on CD or DVD icons or disk image mounts that open just fine. The menus are still not useable in any application. I tried to launch final cut. It loads, but then just goes away without a crash report. Some programs will load. I can also press command-n and a new finder window will open just fine. I can use spotlight to search for something and open a program as well. Terminal, Activity Monitor, disk utility, and a few others open just fine. I tried repairing disk permissions. This went through, but did not correct the problem.
I ran the full 10.4.9 combo update again. It tooks its time in processing and the log indicated that it actually did attempt to install some things. This did not seem to help. I used Pacifist again to replace the Application Services framework with the one in the 10.4.9 combo update. No good. I have trashed third party startup items and kernel extensions. No good. I even replaced the Finder.app and Dock.app (and corrected permissions) with copies from my powerbook running 10.4.9.
I am stuck. Any ideas or help out there? I do not want to do an archive and install.
G4 dual 1.3Ghz 2GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.9)