MenuBar Clock malfunctioning

For the past couple days I have noticed that the clock was not showing the correct time.
If I did a simple click on the clock digital area it would highlight blue and correct itself but I noticed that neither the seconds nor time separators were flashing (as I have it set in preference).
If I open the mini menu and change to analog the clock changes to analog but the battery icon disappears. When I change the mini menu back to digital the battery icon reappears but the clock totally disappears leaving a blank space where the digital clock should be.
Is there a simple fix to get back my clock functionality?
Thanks,
frank

If your computer is a couple of years old, you probably need to change your CMOS battery that is located on the motherboard. Easy change. It provides power to keep you clock and some other functions running when the computer is turned off. They cost around $10 - $15 and you can change yourself. Probably have the instructions in your user's manual.

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Preview missing - no menubar clock - System Prefs won't open....help!

Wow. Preview is missing (it shows up in the Application window as a zero K app, then when I click on it, it vanishes), all the Preview docs I had on my desktop are neutral icons ( just a white rectangle), and also my menubar clock is gone. System Preferences won't open. Help! I've tried repairing permissions but that's as far as I know what to do. Thanks, Chris

Wow, I feel a tiny bit proud of myself. And actually, Disk Warrior eventually helped,in a circuitous way. I reloaded the Combo Update for 10.3.9, that seemed to rejuvenate Preview. But still no System Prefs, no menubar clock. I right-clicked on System Preferences ( that
right-click or option-click is really useful sometimes, because it can open
packages and other single-icon deals that you can't see into otherwise - I
really recommend a 2-button mouse, I was resistant to it after 20 years of Mac-ing but the 2 buttons combined
with a scroll wheel is way better than the Apple mouse and the Dell mouse
is about 10 bucks on eBay)... once that was cracked, there was a Terminal
icon which I clicked on... wwhich indicated that there was a
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Customize menubar clock and date in NOT possible from 10.6

it was very simple in 10.5 but from 10.6 there is NO way to customize (without other programs) the date... for example: mar 15 apr @ 15:30:20
And I saw that is not possible to change a single point in colon (10.15.13 or 10:15:13)
No suggestion?

I've try but with SL is not possible to edit the file com.apple.menuextra.clock.plist. When you try with editor and save it it return as original and nothing changed in menubar...
The only thing that I desire is the possibility to change the date/clock as in Leopard 10.5

Time Clock Malfunction?

For the last two nights my clock had to be reset, up one hour, on my G4 (QuickSilver 2002). What's up?
Angel

Hi, John -
According to what Grant posted (which sounded eminently correct when I stopped to consider it), the network time server doesn't quite work that way.
Apparently the network time server makes not attempt to determine the location of the person using the site - the person could be anywhere in the U.S., or, for that matter, anywhere in the world. I suppose it would not be too difficult for the server site to analyze the ISP point for the user, but that would add to the programming needed, and unnecessarily complicate a simple function; given today's mobility, it could also result in an incorrect (for the user's needs) result.
The simple solution for such services is to provide the time hack in Universal Time (i.e., in what used to be called GMT), and then let the settings in the user's computer adjust from that to set the computer's clock to display the correct local time.
This would mean that two items in the user's computer would need to be correct, in order that proper adjustments can be made from the Universal Time hack -
• the Time Zone setting.
• whether Daylight Savings Time is in effect.
If either of those is not correct, the displayed clock time will be wrong.
Since you have the correct Time Zone set, the behavior you describe sounds proper - it shows the correct time when "Daylight-Saving Time is in effect" is checkmarked (since that is true, at least at present in the U.S.), but does not show the correct time when that is not checkmarked.
I won't need to use OS 9 for more than a few days so no big deal.
If you plan to be using both OSX and OS 9 on the same machine for a while, be sure the Time Zone setting in each OS is set correctly. The two OS's do not share that info; if that setting is different in the two, then the displayed time will change when you switch from one to the other as a boot OS.

Menubar time issues

i cannot see the number '3' in my menubar clock. everytime the number comes up, it just displays a blank space.
AARGH!

Hello danielle:
Try trashing a preference file (com.apple.menubarclock.plist) and then restarting.
Barry

Menubar messed up?

Starting just yesterday I noticed that my menubar clock, volume control, and Fast User Switching menu are not displaying on the right side of the menubar. The Spotlight icon is there, but when I mouse over it I get a spinning beachball, and it is not invokable by clicking on Cmd-Space. In trying to figure out what was wrong I looked at the console:
Mac OS X Version 10.4.8 (Build 8L127)
2007-06-18 06:38:43 -0700
Workaround Bonjour: Unknown error: 0
DOCK: CFMessagePortSendRequest returned -2
2007-06-18 06:40:03.611 System Preferences[241] Error (-4956) locating menu extra
I've tried restarting and the problem isn't fixed. Does anyone have any idea what's going wrong here?
Thanks very much,
Greg
G5 Dual 2.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Thanks for the suggestion; the solution managed to be simpler. I was using a music server called Firefly to drive some audio equipment by Roku; I had changed a setting on Firefly, which was the cause of the problem. I uninstalled Firefly, and things are back to normal.

Menu bar clock shows wrong date

The date in my menu bar clock is stuck several days in the past. It's correct in the calendar widget, in the prefs, and in file timestamps.
I've tried turning the clock off and back on again to reset it, switching NTP servers, manually changing date and time zone. None of this has worked.
What's likely to be wrong, what could have caused it, and how would I fix it?

Warren S,
There is a preference file for the menu bar clock found at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.menubarclock.plist that you can try dragging to the desktop and then restarting or logging out and back in and see if that corrects the problem. You will probably need to reset the Date & Time Preferences in System Preferences but that may fix it.
I'd suggest it might be the computers internal battery going though I believe all the times would be off and not just the digital mode of the menubar clock along with the date would be reset.
If the .plist file suggestion works you can go ahead and trash the file on the desktop but if not just drag it back to the Preferences folder in your Library folder of your Users folder.
post back with further comments or questions,
littleshoulders

Menubar programs hanging when multiple accts. logged in

Hi all:
I am having a weird problem I can't seem to find a solution for.
I have three accounts set up on my iBook, of which all three accounts are usually logged in. We use Fast User Switching all the time. I have had this iBook since Feb 2006, but in the last three weeks a strange problem has cropped up. When I am logged into more than one account and leave the computer sitting for a while, all of the icons and programs on the menubar (clock, spotlight, airport, battery, FUS, volume, and bluetooth) hang and become inaccessible. When I put my cursor up there I get the spinning wheel of death. I don't think it's a finder problem because the standard menus on the left side of the menubar work, as does opening windows and programs from the finder and relaunching the finder does nothing to correct it. My energy saver gets hosed, airport won't connect to my base station, and I can't switch users. Has anyone else seen this behavior? I have reinstalled OS X twice; first time with an erase and install and replacing new users with backups I made; second time erase and install and only copying over essential files like music, photos, movies, and some apps. I only saw it fixed on the second install, but two days after doing so the problem started up again. It's annoying, because the only way to get things working again is to logout of the current user and login under another acct., but half the time when I do that none of the right side programs ever start—I am left with a blank menubar on the right side. The other half of the time I have to shutdown, only the computer never shuts down and I have to perform a hard restart (power button held down until system shuts off). I don't want to keep doing that because I don't want ot fry my HD.
Does anyone have any ideas? You help is greatly appreciated!

Bump

Strange clock problems

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, but here goes. I have an aluminum iMac (24"/2.8 GHz) running 10.4.11, and the clock seems to acting strangely. The menubar clock displays the correct time, and when I check the date, it is correct. However, I have the Backup set to do various backups at about 5 in the afternoon, and instead, they are doing them about noon. Furthermore, I do a full user backup on Wednesdays, but Backup decided to do it at noon today. Finally, when I have Word insert the date in a file, it lists the date as March 3, 3 days ago. Anyone have any ideas of what is going on?
Thanks,
Dave Fritzinger

David,
I suggest you check the battery in your iMac. If you have set up date and time being obtained from a time server you will always see the correct values after booting. The wake-up schedule however depends on the battery if line power is disconnected.
Hans

IMac will not start up. Help please!

Earlier today I was surfing the Net with Safari. Suddenly, the page I was loading stopped loading. The arrow pointer would not move if I moved the mouse. The menubar clock's seconds stopped changing. The entire system was frozen. After about 15-20 seconds, the iMac's fans started blowing louder. After another 30 seconds, I gave up and tried the force quit key combo. No dice. So then I held down the power switch, forcing a shutdown.
Now, when I try to boot my iMac G5, I get one of 3 outcomes:
(a) I hear a faint fan sound, and perhaps the hard drive makes a sound, but nothing else happens.
(b) I hear the startup chime, but the chime doesn't finish. It's cut off and the iMac turns off. Sometimes the light on the front of the iMac comes on for a moment, sometimes not.
(c) The iMac starts up normally. After a minute or so, the whole system freezes again.
I use this Mac at work for all my medical records. Now I have no access to my medical records (but I do have a backup, thankfully). Without a working medical record system, I've had to cancel all my patients for the day and I'm scrambling to find a solution.
I found an article in the Apple knowledgebase. I followed the article step by step. It's called iMac G5: Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on, and can be found at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300908 .
With the back cover removed, and the power cord plugged in, LED 1 lights.
When I hit the internal power button, LED 2 and LED 3 lit up, and OS X started up. The login window appeared. Since my keyboard and mouse were not plugged in, a window came up saying that the iMac was looking for a bluetooth mouse. I don't have one, so I plugged in my USB keyboard and mouse, but the mouse never saw power (the red laser never came on). From that point forward, I couldn't get the mouse to work and after maybe half a minute, the fans started blowing again. So I think this was the same as my Mac starting normally, but then freezing. This time, it froze before I could login.
One thing I noticed: the iMac had been off and unplugged for more than 45 minutes. The last time it had been off and unplugged for more than 45 minutes, when I plugged it in an tried to boot it, it actually started up and I got to the finder. But then after I started to run Disk Utility, the OS froze up again. So it seems, if I leave the iMac off and unplugged for some length of time (45 minutes works), it will boot into OS X.
Okay, so on with the steps described in the article. I held down the internal power button, and the iMac shut down. I hit the SMU button (with the iMac off). Then, I tried the internal power button again. This time, LED 1 lit, and LED 2 lit, but then LED 3 does NOT light up, and the computer does not start up. I just hear a light fan blowing (near the processors, I think) and the hard disk makes a few clicks, nothing more. No chime, no display.
So then I reset the SMU again, by pressing the SMU button (which turned off the computer). Then I pressed the internal power button again. The computer still doesn't start up normally. Same as above.
Reading through the article it asks, after pushing the internal power button, does LED 2 come on momentarily, or not at all? Actually, neither. It comes on, and stays on. The article has no instructions for you if LED 2 comes on and stays on. At this point, I'm stuck.
So I checked another knowledgebase article, About the iMac G5 diagnostic LEDs. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86815
It says:
- LED 1 indicates that trickle voltage from the power supply has been detected. This LED will be ON when the computer is turned off and your power supply is working correctly.
- LED 2 indicates that the main logic board has detected proper power from the power supply when the computer is turned on. This LED will be ON when the computer is turned on and the power supply is working correctly.
- LED 3 indicates that the computer and the LCD display are communicating. This LED will be ON when the computer is turned on and video signal is being generated.
- LED 4 lights only if the computer detects an over-temperature condition. This LED will be OFF when the computer is turned on and running at the correct temperature.
On my iMac, LED 1 and 2 light and stay on, while LED 3 does not (except for the first time I tried this, see above). This seems to indicate a problem generating a video signal.
So maybe it's a problem with the video signal, but I think something else is going on too.
iMac G5 (First Generation) Mac OS X (10.4.6)

right down to the "Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on" 2nd LED staying on when the procedure only gave two options: Momentarily on or not coming on at all.
Hi guys,
The fact that the second LED stays on is actually normal. This what is meant to happen if neither the power supply or one type of motherboard problem have occured. Para 12 of http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300908 only provides the results (no light or momentary) that occur if the test provides evidence of a problem with either of them.
As Anthony notes, if LED remains lit constantly then power is reaching the motherboard and the computer is turned on as described in http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300908 .
Just wanted to make this clear in case other users got worried if they found LED 2 lit.
I agree that http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300908 could be made clearer in this respect.
Cheers
Rod

Extra Zeros in iCal

I'm sure the solution is simple but...my wife's iCal calendar has started adding an extra two zero's to the time in all .ics events. An appointment made for 9:00am displays as 9:00 00am. When I drag the item to the desktop and look at it with quicklook it displays as 9:00 00am. When I import the item into Entourage it displays as 9:00 00am.
Every item in iCal now displays this way so I looked at her iCal preferences. The drop down list in "day starts at" now shows the times as 8:00 00AM! I went to her "date and time preferences" and turned off the display of seconds in her menubar clock with no effect.
Does anyone know where these extra zeros (or seconds) are coming from? Or more importantly, how to turn them off?

oldrick,
Welcome to Apple Discussions.
First of all try refreshing the com.apple.iCal.plist file. You will find the com.apple.iCal.plist file in your Macintosh HD/Users/yourusername/Library/Preferences Folder. Quit iCal, drag the .plist file to your Desktop, log out/in or restart and check iCal for normal behavior.
If that is unsuccessful, open System Preferences...>Language & Text>Formats, and choose, or change the appropriate region. Then check/change the "Times" formats that you are using.
;~)

Dual G5 1.8 GHz screen/keyboard freezes (new with 10.4.6)

Three times in the past month the screen and keyboard on my dual 1.8 GHz G5 (first generation) have "frozen" as I closed windows or Command-tabbed between running applications.
When the screen and keyboard are frozen, the menubar clock does not increment, but I can still move the cursor across the screen with the mouse. The machine itself is not frozen. I can log into it as a server from my MacBook Pro, read files from its hard drives and write files to its hard drives, but I cannot do anything from the machine's own keyboard. If I press the "sleep" LED on my Apple LCD display, the LED dims but doesn't extinguish, and the machine doesn't sleep. If I hold down that LED on the monitor, the machine will power off. On reboot, the recovered files folder in the trash holds six files whose names all start with "dftmp" (five of the six are named dftmpGELNNHAM with some subsequent lower case k and other characters, the sixth dftmpCPEMKHAM, also followed by a string of k and other lower case characters. The Recovered Files folder in the trash also contains a SENDMAIL folder, which is empty.
One diagnostic suggestion I received was to open Activity Monitor and the Console to see if anything unusual occurred (spikes in processor usage or RAM usage, for example). I have the logs, and just a few minutes ago another freeze occurred (the console's display and the Activity Monitor display freeze along with everything else). I'm not capable of interpreting the logs.
Rebooting after this most recent freeze, the CPU usage bar graph now shows the two processors alternating in rhythmic spikes of CPU usage by System (from a low of 5% to a high of more than 30%, the spikes being about 18 seconds apart per processor (so total System CPU usage peaks at 30% or thereabouts every 9 seconds). My sense is that this is not normal, and my MacBook Pro certainly doesn't do this. At the moment, the only things I'm doing on the machine are typing this message, downloading in Thoth, and watching the logs and Activity Monitor.
Is anyone interested in looking at my console logs? Is there someone else I should report this to? It's not something I can show to my local Genius, because this has happened only 3 times in a month. On each occasion, the freeze occurred when I was closing windows or changing focus from one window to another, but I cannot reproduce the freeze at will.
Thanks so much,
1,8 GHz dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Dual G5, 2 internal drives, 2.5 GBytes RAM, ATI X800XT graphics card, 2 displays
1,8 GHz dual G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Try using Disk Utility to repair your startup disk (hard drive) as shown in Dr.Smokes Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption and see if that helps.
Cheers!
DALE

Itunes 9.02, Snow Leopard and iMac 24 - FREEZE UP!

I have 4 mac machines in the home and this problem is only affecting the iMac 24. From reading multiple forums, I can safely say that I am not the only one. iTunes freezes sort of randomly during playback, store browsing, podcast etc...
The only thing I can do is a hard reboot. After I reboot my local Disk needs to be repaired with Disk Utility as the directory counts do not match. I have used the install DVD to repair my main disk over 10 times now.
I have tried all the suggestions on the forums including:
removing plugins
Re-installing iTunes (multiple times)
Rebuilding library
removing SyncServices directory
disabling genius and home sharing
and more
This problem seems to have started after the installation of iTunes 9
I am usually a very happy Apple customer but this has been quite the frustrating experience. Can someone acknowledge this issue at Apple so that I can rest assured that a patch will fix this at some point?
I am out of ideas and search engines to look for answers. Any feedback on this thread is appreciated.

I am reporting exact same problem on iMac 24" (3.06GHz/Mac OS X 10.6.2/iTunes 9.0.2).
iTunes randomly freezes, leaving only the spinning beach ball. Sometimes, if left alone for several minutes, it'll report "iTunes library files cannot be saved (-50)" error. Alas, clicking "OK" to dismiss the dialog window only results in the same message popping up again and again. In all cases of iTunes' freezing and the ensuing beach ball, the Dock seems to go awry, too. The application switcher (command-tab) won't show and clicking on the dock will only freeze it; But, the menubar clock somehow still runs.
After a hard restart, which I am so weary of after having done so many during the last couple of months, iTunes always goes through the long "Checking iTunes library" process before starting up again.
I can't seem to pinpoint the pattern for these freezes.
For now, I have disconnected a Western Digital My Studio II external hard drive used for Time Machine per some online discussion about the lack of Snow Leopard support for that drive by Western Digital and have tossed iTunes' preference files. I'm not ready to rebuild the library file just yet.
At any rate, I hope someone can give us a clear answer. Thank you.

Cannot display date in menu bar

For some reason, my computer (in OS 10.3.9) will only display the date & time in the floating window (by checking the box to display date & time and selecting the button to display in window thru system preferences), but won't display the date & time in the menu bar (even though it should since the menu bar button is selected in the system preferences).
This seems to be a bug in OS 10.3.9 that has not been fixed yet. Has anyone had this problem and been able to fix it?
Thanks

Hi ndl! And Welcome To Discussions!
From March 2006 MacAddict magazine p.56
Open Terminal
At the prompt, type or copy & paste
defaults write -g AppleICUTimeFormatStrings -dict-add 2 "MMMM d, y hh':'mm':ss' 'a"
Press Return
Then type killall SystemUIServer
Press Return again, and your menu bar will disappear.
Click anywhere on your Desktop to reload it.
This setting only affects your User Account; other users on the Mac will not see the change.
To restore your menu bar to normal, repeat the process, omitting the MMMM d, y part in the first Terminal command, like so:
defaults write -g AppleICUTimeFormatStrings -dict-add 2 "hh':'mm':ss' 'a"
For Tiger 10.4.x
Easily add the date to the menubar Mac OS X Hints
For Panther 10.3.x
Add the date to the menubar clock Mac OS X Hints
Also,
Tip: Date and Time in the Menu Bar
Good Luck!
ali b

No more date in the Apple menu bar with OSX 10.5.6

What is for me a glaring omission from both windows and Mac is the option to show the current date. The trick described at http://cybernetnews.com/2008/05/22/cybernotes-add-the-date-to-mac-menubar-clock/ however worked perfect. Until now... Unfortunately, it looks like with OSX 10.5.6 this no longer works. The behaviour when you have the date components in the time configured is odd: at first the top-right system menus seems to behave normal, eg when you click the airport option. But when you move the mouse down to select a menu item, the menu closes quickly on you and leaves the air tunes menu marked blue. Similar things happen with Time Machine and other system menus; rendering the top-right menu practically useless. Switching back (via Preferences to -in my case- Dutch system setting) will remove the date from the clock and restore the menu to normal behaviour.
Does anybody know a nice little date utility for in the menu bar that works with 10.5.6 ? Thanks !

I have no issues using the trick described in that method. Something is likely wrong with your system. It's also possible that the issue is specific to the Dutch localization.
either way, try resetting your time display preferences
enter the following terminal command
rm ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
then log out/in. Your time display will be reset to the default. change it again using the method in that link.

MenuBar Clock malfunctioning

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