Menu bar hang-up

Since 10.6.3 I'm having a problem where the menu bar hangs as I switch to another active program. I click on a window to activate it and it comes to the top and I can type into it and use controls within it but the menu bar is still stuck on the previous application. I can get the menu bar behaving properly using command-tab or by quitting an active window but the problem reappears if I switch by simply clicking on a window. Any suggestions?

I found the solution to this problem in another thread. The culprit is the MagicPrefs application; remove it and the problem disappears. I'm trying the Better Touch Tool (BTT) as an alternative; so far - so good.

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Menu Bar hangs in FF3.6.8 for Linux Mint 8. Delays of 1 minute plus after clicking on any element. Right click completely disfunctional. This happens in Safe Mode too. Even a complete remove/reinstall of FF did not cure problem.

This is a persistent repeat problem. I had this problem a week ago. A Linux savvy friend could not solve it, so we deleted and removed FF. That was a drastic solution, but solved the problem.
I had Ad Block and No Script add ons. I thought No Script might be the problem. Problem remained after disabling NS. I later even removed No Script but that still did not solve the problem.
Running FF in safe mode from terminal does not stop problem. If I try to right click at all, anywhere on page FF slows to a glacial crawl. It also requires that I force quit.

This is a persistent repeat problem. I had this problem a week ago. A Linux savvy friend could not solve it, so we deleted and removed FF. That was a drastic solution, but solved the problem.
I had Ad Block and No Script add ons. I thought No Script might be the problem. Problem remained after disabling NS. I later even removed No Script but that still did not solve the problem.
Running FF in safe mode from terminal does not stop problem. If I try to right click at all, anywhere on page FF slows to a glacial crawl. It also requires that I force quit.

Sync, Mail, menu bar, iPhone

After updatig to 10.7.2 and tranferring to i Colud:
My Sync menu bar icon is still existant av make the menu bar hang when toggeled.
System Prefs icon "MobileMe" is also still there, and marking the Syncronize tab makes the System Prefs freeze.
Mail won't quit due to something like "registering syncronice prefs" (my translation from norwegian, see picture).
The sync between iTunes and iPhone is also extremely slow, probably of same sync reason.
Anyone?

Yes, I did read "the manual". Both the official site and several others. And I think I did it right, - or not (?). When the "MailSyncPref" referred to in Mail has been working for a while (~5 min.) it disappears, and I can quit Mail, access menu bar and sync iPhone through iTunes. Still it seems to work very slow. The only thing I've not done yet is to backup to iCloud, because I worry that the system will be occupied rest of the day/night.
Still someone out there with a good idea?
Steinar

Firefox is hanging after trying to update Adobe Flash. I can't fix it as long as Firefox is open, but I'm unable to close it-menu bar won't even appear.

In the process of updating Adobe Flash, Firefox froze. It registers as being open, and none of the fixes I've tried will work as long as it's open, but I can't close it. Even when I click on the Firefox icon, the Firefox menu bar doesn't appear. No Firefox window appears.

Good advice - I'll keep that in mind. Thanks

No menu bar, Dashboard after 10.4.11 upgrade on G3 iMac

I'm not a Mac expert, so bear with me here. I installed the 10.4.11 upgrade on my wife's iMac DV G3 (i.e. the most important machine in the house). During the installation, I got a popup stating that my startup disk was nearly full and that I should (not must, but should) delete some files. I clicked through the popup and the completed the installation. After that the machine rebooted and I got to a blue background screen but no Dashboard or menu bar at the top of the screen.
I rebooted in safe mode (power on w/shift key) and got to a login window, logged in, and got to the same blue background screen.
Q - What are my other options here? I seem to have no access into the machine, though it seems to be booted and not dead.
Please help.
tcpasley

I still have the original problem of No top menu, No dashboard, No desktop Icons after login. I still see coreservicesd crashed in /var/logs/system.log.
Here's what I've done:
Booted from Install DVD, repaired Disk and Permissions repeatedly - no problems here; no repairs done after the first pass through (and only permissions needed repair then).
From a bash terminal: checked /var/logs/system.log. Found the coreservicesd crash. Also see that lookupd exits abnormally.
As per an Apple Tiger support page (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464), followed the instructions for "You see an empty, blue screen" and renamed some plist files and directories. Got repeatable performance in that I could always log in but would only get a desktop background w/o menu/Dashboard/icons.
Booted to OS9 and copied the 10.4.11 COMBO package file to the Macintosh Hard Drive, rebooted with the Tiger install DVD, opened a bash terminal and installed the 10.4.11 COMBO package as per http://net3x.blogspot.com/2007/03/macos-x-1049-update-killed-my-mac.html. No problems encountered with the installation.
Unplugged the machine for ~10 min at some point here. This apparently reset the clock, which I set via the date command.
Rebooted in Safe Mode. Actually got Dashboard and the Time and Finder magnifying glass portion of the top menu (upper right corner) to appear. Clicked on the Finder in Dashboard and got the "infinite spinning beachball" hang. Rebooted in Safe Mode and then got the featureless desktop background again. I haven't checked logs of the one semi-successful startup yet.
So - installing the 10.4.11 COMBO package DID NOT fix the problem.
I also find that networking is not being configured. This could be due the the renamed preferences files and directories.
What should I try next, short of CraigsList for a new/old machine?
Please help,
tcpasley

Missing Menu bar items - last effort

I've searched and read here and found no solutions, so I'm posting this as a final attempt.
I'm working with a system new to me. It had OS 9 on it when I got it. I checked for firmware updates that might be needed and it seemed current, so I installed 10.4 from my retail disc (versus disk from my G5). No problems. I did a custom install with none of the foreign (to USofA) languages and only a couple of the printer manufacturers drivers. Once installation complete, I finished the setup. Repaired disk permissions, then ran the stand alone 10.4.6 combo update. Repair disk permissions again - then used software update as a shoping list for needed updates and downloaded most of them and installed in the order released. Those I didn't download, I used software update to install. From the MacFixit site, I found that reinstalling the combo update fixed this issue for some - it did not for me. I also tried, System Preferences, and turning them on, but typically they would not show and in one instance (I think it was Sound, volume control) the box would check, from my clicking on it, then the beach ball, then would unchecked - all on it's own.
This is the second rebuild of the system and still the issue persists. The first rebuild was with a 200 GB HD in the system, but it's too large to make full use of with the stock controller, so I purchased new 120 GB HD.
I have no third party menu bar items and almost no third party software on the system. The primary piece is the current version of Cocktail, which I have been using to repair permissions, etc. though I have also used Apple's Disk Utility for the same and seen no difference. I have also tried deleting various Apple pref files, per other threads in this forum - to no avail.
One last tidbit - in case it means something to someone - restarts on this system take forever and sometimes I have to do a manual shut down holding the power button in. This is not anything I've seen before - on the dozens of systems I've worked with/on.
At this point, I see nothing more to try than move to an earlier version of Mac OS X, perhaps 10.3 even, though I really wanted 10.4 for my wife's system. I've worked with 10.4.6 on many systems and not seen this, including my dual 800 G4 and my dual 2.7 G5.

No FW or USB devices, other than Apple USB keyboard plugged into the cpu and Apple single button mouse plugged into the keyboard.
BUT - I may have figured out what was going on. This is the slowest system I've put 10.4 on and it's been awhile since 10.4 has been out. I started thinking about what kinds of issues people had when it was first released and I recalled a lot of people getting hung up by the initial Spotlight indexing. Since I had a hunch this was somehow a factor, I decided to try turning sleep off and letting the system sit for awhile. When I started it and worked with the first five or ten minutes, the icons were not there. But when I came back an hour or so later, they were. I restarted the system and it did so in the manner I would expect, not hanging as it had all the other times. Once restarted the icons showed up. I have since installed the stand alone 10.4.2 combo and restarted and the icons are still there. Will go for 10.4.6 and see what happens.
My initial theory at this point is this. This is the slowest system I've put 10.4 on and I hadn't seen much of an impact on my other systems from the initial Spotlight indexing, but for whatever reason, it seem to really impact this system. I didn't see this on my dual 800 G4, nor the dual 2.7 G5, but I think that is what was going on with this system. That's my current theory until I hear something that seems more plausible.

Menu bar and Dock disappear after exiting Time Machine

Time Machine has worked absolutely fine for almost a week. A few hours ago I clicked the icon on my dock to see how many incremental backups it had made today, and everything seemed fine. However, when I click cancel now and the desktop comes back, the dock completely disappears. The menu bar is about halfway to being functional: The shadow appears, but it does not lighten my desktop picture behind it anymore. All the menus are gone, except for those for Bluetooth, AirPort, the clock, etc. I can still open Finder windows by double-clicking the folders on my desktop, but most -- if not all -- keyboard shortcuts are rendered inoperable. They mostly just produce the default error sound, and control-F2 simply highlights a very small invisible box in the top-left corner of the screen. I can also no longer open any applications, and any applications I already had open I can't select.
The only way out was to force a shutdown, but if I try to use Time Machine in the Finder this problem keeps recurring. (It works perfectly in iPhoto.) Also, now if I try to back up Time Machine hangs while "Preparing". I have spent the last hour trying whatever I could think of and also wailing like a child. Please help!

Just a thought....this is not a problem with my MacBook on which I installed a new version of 10.5.
The problem only manifests itself on my iMac at work which I updated using a Drop-in Leopard DVD.
Do you think this could be the problem? Anyone out there having problems that did a retail 10.5 install?
I just re-installed Leopard from the drop-in DVD and first time I opened Mail and went to Time Machine it seemed to be working....it gave me the starry background and asked me to select items to restore to the Inbox. But then it failed to restore the selected messages and I'm back to where I started with a non-working Time Machine in Mail.

Photoshop 5.5 extended 64bit on windows 8.1 using Dell 4k monitor p2715q and a shrunken menu bar

Excitement was short lived after activating the 4K monitor and found that the display in Photoshop 5.5 suddenly shrunk. The text on the menu bar is just like a 5 point text and negotiating through the menu was a painful process. How do I increase the menu bar size to be larger.
One site suggested I change the UI in the preference to 200... but there is no selection of this to be seen in the preference drop down menu. And now PS 5.5 hangs every time I get into the preference area. Should I uninstall the software completely and reinstall it.
Hope someone can shed some light into this. TQ

Folks....
I have found the way to get around this and the answer lies in the display adjustment for text and the icons... under the control panel.
This adjustment is global and encompass all software not only photoshop. Hence I hope Microsoft will look into this for 4K monitor users especially those with dual monitors with different K's eg: 4K and a 1920 panel.

Spinning beach ball in menu bar, sys pref does not work etc

Since last 2 days I have the following problem with Macbook:
1. When i hover the cursor over the menu bar, the beach ball appears. this is for the Mac menu items such as Airport, Spotlight, Fast switching, time & date and also for iStatmenus. However, Little Snitch menu bar indicator is not affected
2. Sysprefs also does not work. It opens up and immediately the beach ball appears and I can't click on any of the sys preferences
3. If i try to watch a video, then the video will not display, though the progress indicator will happily be progressing away (QT, VLC etc)
4. When i run in Safe mode, then everything seems to work ok (at least the menu bar, though the video part still doesn't work)
5. And also in Normal mode, Safari/Netscape Navigator/Camino et al hang & the beach ball appears, but in safe mode they work ok though very sluggish.
6. Though i can't be certain, I think all these problems began after iTunes crashed on me while running a podcast (?)
I have tried everything; repair prefs and repair disk, have run Tinkertool system2 to see if that would help but to no avail. I even downloaded and installed OS X 10.6.7 Combo update-didn't do any good.

I have been trying to deal with the same problem for the last week.
My machine is a MBP 17" 4 GB 2.6GHz, 250 GB alluminum.
1) I've immigrated my whole user apps and doc files to an IMAC 20" 2GB 2.66GHz 350 GB, and the system works just fine on the IMAC (I am using my system that used to be in the MBP right now).
2) I've over written everything on the HD with zeros and have done a clean install of SNOW LEOPARD on my MBP, but as the system got loaded, already before any working files or app files have been reinstalled, the spinning beach ball appears on the upper RIGHT portion of the menu bar and makes the system inoperable.
3) Done system update and made it into a 10.6.8 but the problem persists.
I've basically done what Ravindra had tried.
Please HELP.

Ocassionally, when running Firefox 7.0.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.8, I am unable to click the items of the left-most side of the Menu Bar (everything between and including the Apple symbol and "Help").

The keyboard shortcuts for all of the options still work, but will not let me select anything with the mouse. The Apple key seems also not to allow selection of anything on the Menu Bar.
I can browse normally when this happens; it's not freezing or crashing. And I am able to click everything on the right side of the Menu Bar; the clock, wireless icon, battery, etc. Also, other programs running at the same time don't have this problem. A restart of Firefox seems to temporarily fix the problem, but it's happened a few times, with no clear pattern as to what is causing it.
Anyone else having this problem? Solutions?

I fixed this, in a fairly brutal way. Here is the solution.
Save your bookmarks, like on the desktop. Or you could launch Safari and import your Firefox bookmarks into Safari, then later pull them back into Firefox.
COMPLETELY delete everything that has to do with Firefox. That includes not only the application, any dmg file hanging around and most importantly the ENTIRE contents of User/Library/ApplicationSupport/Firefox. Indeed just throw the whole Firefox folder in the Trash. Empty the Trash just in case. Now use Safari to download a new Firefox.dmg file and start from scratch. You will have to re-establish your Preferences. But Firefox will not hang, and most importantly, it will not hang your OS. --Gene

Date and time in menu bar

Hi everyone,
I'm having a very silly problem that is driving me crazy. I found similar problems on this forum but not exactly the answer to them.
The "Show date and time in menu bar" checkbox System Preferences will not remain checked. I have checked it 50 times but every time I close it and go back it's unchecked.
Based on some suggestions on the forum I check the SystemUIServer in Activity Monitor and it's hanging (i.e. Not Responding). I tried force quitting and restarting but it doesn't get it going. Somehow I think these two problems are related.
I also tried deleting the com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file under ~/Library/Preferences and logging out and back in to go back to system defaults on the menu bar but that didn't work either.
Alot of people solved similar problems by installing OS X 10.5.2 but I'm already running 10.5.2! I'm running out of ideas here.
Any help is appreciated.

Excuse me, my interface is in Dutch and I literally translated the name.
Desktop and Screen saver I believe, select the menu for the screen saver.
There is a box you can tick, it will display the time when the screen saver is running.
It could be displayed like 3553 instead of the correct time.
If that is the case check in another user account, or make a new user account in Apple menu>System preferences>Accounts. Does the problem occur in the new account as well?

Top Menu Bar Freezing

Hey, I just noticed this today, I'm not sure how long it's been going on though. On my Powerbook G4, certain top menu bar items, all that have to do with OS X, including the TIME, SPOTLIGHT, AIRPORT MONITOR, as well as SOUND CONTROL freeze temporarily. Thus, the time freezes and does not display the correct time. Instead it displays the time at which the freeze occured. When you mouseover any of these items, the rainbow wheel appears. Has anyone had this problem? Possible fix? Thanks a lot!

Hi, Spencer and Inspired, et.al. —
Edit: Inspired's post appeared while I was editing what's below. We clearly agree on potential solutions. Since I've listed a few additional suggestions, I'll post this as a complement to Inspired's excellent response . . .
Some background and a few ideas for you to try —
The items on the right side of the menu bar are called "menu extras," and are managed by a process named SystemUIServer. When the behavior you've described is occurring, you may want to open Activity Monitor and check whether SystemUIServer is "hanging." If so, this may be a temporary situation. Your logs may provide an indication of what's causing the problem (I'd check system.log and console.log first). Please post back if you'd like help doing this.
From various readers' reports and solutions, this kind of problem can be caused by a number of things — including Spotlight activity, corrupted .plist files, incompatible 3rd-party "menu extras," etc.
For now, you may want to try these ideas (one at a time):
(1) Check that it's not simply an issue with Spotlight activity &/or indexing. If it is, waiting a little should do the trick.
(2) Locate these two files, move them to the trash, and restart:
~/Library/Preferences/ com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/ com.apple.systemuiserver.xxxxxxxxxxxx.plist.
After restarting, these preference files will be regenerated. But please note that you may have to reset all of your preferences involving menu extras — or launch them from the "Menu Extras" folder, as described above.
(3) Identify any 3rd-party "menu extras" you have installed, and disable them — then check to see the impact of this change. If you have unsanity's Application Enhancer system (APE) installed, you may have to use its preference panel and uninstall it.
(4) Try locating and re-enabling menu extras — either from their respective System Preferences or (not all have prefs) from their path: Go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras. All of the menu extras are located here. (SystemUIServer is also located in the CoreServices folder.) Double-click to re-enable any of the menu extras that are currently disabled. Note that, if you make a mistake, you can click on any menu extra and ⌘-drag it to a diffferent location or off the menu bar entirely. You may want to restart (some would say to also repair permissions) after doing this — but I can't confirm this is necessary.
(5) In several situations (that I mention only as a ~"last resort"), users have used Pacifist to extract a "fresh" copy of SystemUIserver from their Install Disc or, e.g., from the 10.4.3 Combo Update Package and replacing the existing copy of SystemUIServer. Note that there are supporting files — so please post back to discuss this if you eventually decide it's warranted.
I hope one of these solutions that have worked for others is helpful.
Please feel free to post back and discuss things further . . .
Good luck!
Dean
Message was edited by: Dean Pahl

Bluetooth crashed menu bar

I recently opened up my powerbook and turned on my bluetooth mighty mouse. Normally they find each other and away we go. This time it didn't work, and the menu bar (with the time, volume control, bluetooth, vpn etc. icons) hung. Spotlight and my SMART reporter app stayed working OK.
I force-quitted the SystemUIServer process, which manages the menu bar, but it was not able to recover.
I know the problem is with bluetooth, so I was wondering if there was a way of deactivating and reactivating it from the command line, without restarting the machine. I can't use System Preferences, because anything bluetooth there just hangs (there's no Bluetooth preference item, but Keyboard and Mouse has a Bluetooth tab which doesn't work). When I look at /System/Library/PreferencePanes, Finder is sometimes unable to report the file info for the Bluetooth.prefPane. There's also nothing in /Library/Preferences that references Bluetooth, though I thought there was supposed to be a preference there (to trash when things go wrong).
I'm reluctant to restart because I run simulations over a number of days that won't recover through a restart, and I really don't want to lose a couple of days hard work on my powerbook's part. Any ideas?

Open the Terminal application in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, and run the following:
defaults read com.apple.systemuiserver menuExtras
which will produce a block of text. Copy this text, paste it into TextEdit, and remove the line relating to Bluetooth from the list. Next, replace read with write in the command, append the modified text to it, and put the completed command into the Terminal. Log out and back in, or quit the SystemUIServer process again.
(19844)

Menu bar problems in Yosemite?

Is anyone else dealing with a frozen menu bar in Yosemite?
It seems my issue is related to SytemUIServer eating up a ton of CPU power and then hanging. The problem was causing my whole system to run slowly right after I installed Yosemite two days ago. Now everything else seems to run just fine by I still have a frozen clock in the menu bar and can't access any of the options up there (clock, volume, bluetooth, time machine).
Weirdly the icons for Google Drive and Dropbox in the menu bar work just fine. At this point everything else seems fine so I suppose the problem is tolerable. But I'd really rather not have that frozen clock staring at me all the time! By the way, I everything freezes up when I try to access Date & Time settings through the main Settings menu.
Has anyone else had a similar problem?
Thanks!

Hi TheProfessor314,
If you are having an issue with being unable to use some items in the menu bar of your Mac mini there are some possibilities for troubleshooting. I would suggest first testing to see if the issue is limited to a single user account. See this article for how -
Isolating an issue by using another user account
You may also want to try booting the computer into Safe Mode to see if the issue continues to occur. See this article -
OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

Menu Clock Hangs, System Clock remains working

Since upgrading to Mountain Lion, the menu clock hangs randomly. When I cursor over that area of the system menu bar the spinning beach ball appears. In System Preferences the clock reads the correct time, but none of the other options can be selected. An older OS post recommended quitting SystemUIServer using the Activity Monitor utility. That clears the problem, but it recurs. In that older post it suggests removing a preference file and having it regenerated, but the file specified doesn't seem to exist in Mountain Lion.
Thoughts?

None of these radical fixes is acceptable (or, for that matter effective).
Here's my symptoms, fwiw:
The clock in the menu bar regularly hangs. Hovering the mouse pointer over it shows the swirling pinwheel busy icon. The system knows what time it it - for instance, if I create a file it shows the right creation time.
When I access System Preferences - Date/Time, Show date and time in menu bar is not checked (though it is showing). When I check it, it unchecks itself after a while. Meanwhile, it shows the swirling rainbow pinwheel.
This animal is sick - and from the long history in this thread, has been for a long time.
Why does Apple not fix this?

Menu bar hang-up

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