Rabid SystemUIServer and hanging apps on first login after boot

[000001]

Hi,

Curious problem here (am glad i found a workaround, or it would be less curious and more making my face bleed):

On first login after boot of a particular user, there is a massively rabid SystemUIServer process that hogs about 110% of CPU (on a 2x2.5 G5) and seems to lead to a lot of stock apps (Terminal, Activity Monitor, TextEdit, Installer) and pref panes (Accounts, Network) hanging on opening...

I was able to use normally the xterm in X11, poke around at this, and kill the process, but even subsequently, the processes mentioned above still hang. (While hanging, even, say, Terminal shows 100+% CPU usage in ps aux)

However, if i log out, log in as a diff user, log out again and come back, all is fine and dandy.

Initially, I had expected this to be related to some menu extensions, so i removed some startup items, such as the Little Snitch Daemon, MagicMenu and the Techtool startup component, which were also at the time showing elevated CPU usage, but for each removed process there, SystemUIServer just seemed to hog more...

Now, I have replaced MagicMenu (which was a slow-starter suspect) and while the insane hoggish behavior persists on 1st login, it does -not- cause any problems on subsequent logins.

Also of interest might be that if after a boot I log in directly to a different user account, no hoggish behavior happens there.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this?

TIA

 

[Darkshadow]

Could be a bad preference file. You could try moving ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver somewhere else and then restarting and see if it still happens. Note that removing that file will probably cause your menu extras not to be loaded, you'll probably have to set them up again.

Is there any application/menu item loaded the user that has this issue has that the other user doesn't? If there is, that's probably where you should start looking.

 

[000001]

the problem is this user is the main "proper" user on this machine, and thus has loads installed that the ither user does not... will try the removed prefs for sysuiserver... i did take a look at the .plist file and found nothing to be wiird there, but maybe as you say itš corrupted...