Hard Drive icon won't open and menu bar flashes off and on

All of a sudden, in the middle of the day, my eMac went haywire. I can launch apps and docs are one the desktop. But I cannot open the Hard Drive icon. If I double-click on it (or used Command-O from keyboard), the icon won't open. And when I attempt to open it, the Finder Menu Bar begins flashing off and on (vanishing, reappearing, vanishing) across the top of the screen. I haver rebooted, run disk utility to repair permissions, even booted from TechTools to run its diagnostics. But still no access to the Hard Drive icon. I logged out and logged in as a TEST user, and same thing happens even when logged in that way. Literally, this happened in an instant. One minute the eMac was fine, then this started. Anyone else seen this? -- david

If the problem exists in both your regular account and your Test account odds are that it is at the system level. You can try a Safe boot (hold down the shift key at startup) to see if there is a third party startup item or one of the optional Apple functions that is causing the problem. You could also boot from the installer disk and use the Disk Utility->Repair Disk function. If you have a utility such as Tiger Cache Cleaner which will do a deep cache clean you can also try that.
Francine
Schwieder

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Menu Bar Flashes On and Off

The right side of my menu bar flashes on and off every few seconds. It's there for a second or two then disappears for a second or two. Is there a way I can get this to stop?
It did this when I first got my MBP a few weeks ago and simply opening an app fixed it, now it just keeps flashing on and off.
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this means that SystemUIServer keeps crashing. delete the file
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WD Ext. Hard Drive icon won't go away in Menu Bar?

First, I tried Time Machine and it said I had to reformat my WD, but I didn't want to do that because it had my PC laptop saved to it. So, then I opened WD in Finder and tried to start the process through WD's software. It Scanned and started Processing my Mac files and during the process, I cancelled because I really wanted to use Time Machine. I then deleted the folder "Memeo" from my Finder Applications and proceeded to use Time Machine. I went forward and reformatted my WD so I could use Time Machine, which worked great. However, there is an icon from Memeo stuck in my Menu Bar and I can't seem to get it to go away. Please Help!

Yes; however, I move it to the trash earlier, thinking my Mac would take care of all that. Now when I connect my hard drive, it comes up as Time Machine, so I don't know how to get it back like it was before I began Time Machine?

External hard drive icon won't appear on desktop

Apparently spontaneously (has worked fine in the past!) I cannot get a desktop icon for my La Cie external hard drive to appear. I can see the hard drive in Desktop Utility and can eject it through there but the verify and repair options aren't highlighted.

I hear it spinning- I think?
That may not be so good because it suggests the power is getting to it and it is something else more critical to the functioning of the drive that is wrong. If it is the enclosure you could try moving it out of the enclosure into a different one, or into the computer.
I just used Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory- no luck.
Ah, so did Diskwarrior see the drive? I didn't think you could see the drive in Disk Utility.
I also replaced the firewire Cable- no luck.
Good try but the flashing blue light suggested something else to me.
I'm now doing to bring it to a local Computer Store to try to retrieve the information.
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I wrote to Lacie- but they are so slow in responding- it will be days.
Ummmm....

I plugged in my external Hard drive everything was going fine, I dumped lots of music into it. Now I can find the external hard Drive Icon. I have done a search using spotlight and WD My Passport doesn't show up.

Any Idea as to where it went?

What does this have to do with iCloud on your iOS device (i.e. this forum you've posted in)?
Have you tried unplugging and plugging the hard drive back in? Tried turning it off and back on again?

Spaces Preferences won't open from Menu Bar

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It's weird that this problem has somehow propagated to all of your machines and accounts. Really weird. Makes me think some third party gadget, common to all machines/accounts, is interfering with the correct operation of the menubar icons.
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Remove the icon from the menubar (e.g., command-drag it off) and put it back again.
Look at log files in Console to see if there is any kind of error message appearing when you try to start up spaces preferences from the menubar.
(Re)Moving the relevant preferences to see if they are corrupted. I am thinking of
home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
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charlie

edited by host HARD DRIVE ICON WILL NOT OPEN ON DESKTOP WHEN CLICK

my HD will not open on desktop when i click on it. For 4 years i had no problem on this every.
why does this happen now?
what is wrong with the icon?
could my HD start becoming bad?
what are some signs that i should be "aware of" is this one?

You might try booting from DVD or another drive and running Disk Utility and Disk Warrior.
Or Single Users Mode (command s on startup) and follow on-screen instruction command
/sbin/fsck -fy
to repair your boot drive
... or a Safe Boot with shift key held down.
Corrupt prefs, directory, could be a number of small or major things.
But, in any case, make sure you have backups, and a bootable backup clone, maybe an emergency boot drive as well (install OS X on another drive if you don't have one now).

My mail icon won't open

my mail icon won't open but the bar goes across and i can't open my mail from there either. Also when it goes to the top of the screen it won't let exit it and i have to do a hard shutdown. can someone help.

With Mail quit....
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Hard Drive icon missing - Desktop folders won't open - Need Help!

I need help! I have a 400 MHz PowerPC G4 with 768 MB SDRAM, no DVD drive - was running OS X 10.3.9 quite happily. We became owners of a new iPod Nano - so we had to upgrade to 10.4.
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I attempted to reinstall Mac OS X using FireWire, but now the Hard Drive is full and is telling me it will erase and reinstall. I need to save files off this computer now (Sadly no backup exists) before my wife readies divorce papers.
I tried using FireWire Target Disk Mode to copy files - with the 400MHz as Target I just get a spinning Beach Ball any time I click on the Icon. After far too long it opened up an empty window.
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Whenever something starts going wrong with the computer I suggest you first boot from the installer disk, select language if applicable, choose utilities, run Disk Utility and verify (and repair if necessary) the drive. Then repair the permissions on your computer. You can also repair permissions from DU on your main drive while booted, but to properly verify and repair your drive you have to run it from a drive other than the boot drive.
[Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214]
[Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672]
[Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751]
From BDaqua (couldn't have said it better):
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
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Was this a retail installer disc that you used to do the upgrade?
How much free space do you have on the computer?
Did you use the [PPC Combo updater|http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html] to get to 10.4.11?
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How do I save an IPhoto library onto a new hard drive while it's open? It is a miracle I got it open, and it has refused to be copied the usual way (by dragging its icon to destination drive). i want to save those photos!

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My external Lacie Hard drive that contains the IPhoto library is a "locked volume." Wow, now it is suddenly letting me copy it. I dragged the library's icon to the new destination (a 3T hard drive) and it is working so far.
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Highlighted Hard Drive Icons on Desktop no longer open when dragging/copyin

I noticed this yesterday and I have no idea how to fix it - hope someone here might have a quick fix.
When I attempt to move files into my folders from the desktop, I used to simply drag the files over the icon of the hard drive I wished to place it, and the icon would highlight, and then open, and I could navigate to the folder I wanted and drop them, and all the windows would close.
Now when I attempt to move files off the desktop in this way, the hard drive icon will highlight, but won't' open the window automatically as it used to.
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Respectfully submitted,
Len

Thank you for your response. That was exactly the problem. I have no idea how it became switched off, since I'm the only one that uses the computer, but no matter.
Thanks for the help!

Won't allow me to change my hard drive icon

Hello anyone! Here's my problem...I've been using Mac since 1985 and this has always been how you did this and now it's not working, has something changed?
1. Copy icon, picture, photo
2. Click once on hard drive icon on desktop and choose Get Info
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4. Paste
5. Voila!
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There are a number of possible problems:
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Francine
Francine
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On my macbook pro the hard drive icon is not on my desktop and I don't know how to find the hard drive or get the icon back on my desktop

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Hard Drive icon won't open and menu bar flashes off and on

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