right side of menu bar gone; I blame Mplayer

F

flugennock

Registered
G4 iBook, 1.25ghz, OSX Tiger 10.4.11

Tried out mplayer today, decided it was a bit sketchy and decided to trash it.

Quit mplayer, upper right menu bar items disappeared. No AirPort status indicator, no audio volume control, no clock, no charge status indicator. All of these things still work and are accessible through the Preferences panels, but "show in menu bar" preference setting selections don't "stick".

Other things tried without success: verifying disk and permissions (both OK), resetting PRAM, booting into safe mode, logging in as a different user, force-quitting SystemUIServer process, deleting com.apple.systemuiserver.plist and com.apple.systempreferences.plist.

Any ideas? I'm stumped, and pretty much prepared to go on with life without the right side of my menu bar.

Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I blame Mplayer for this mess.
 
I doubt MPlayer caused you to lose the menubar icons - although that seems to be the trigger...
Try logging in as a different user - I know you already tried that, but create a fresh user account just for this purpose.
From the hard drive/Library, then Preferences, try removing these pref files:
com.apple.BezelServices.plist
com.apple.dockfixup.plist

Do you have your OS X 10.4 installer DVD?
 
I've done pretty much everything I could think of, including booting into safe mode, logging in as a different user, running a permissions/disk verification from the 10.4 install disk (verified OK), deleting .plist files for SystemUIserver and system preferences. It's worth noting that when booted to the 10.4 System Install disk, it showed appropriate icons for language and battery-charge status in the right side of the menu bar.

I'll try those new suggestions and post the results back here. Thanks!
 
The one weird thing mplayer did that may have triggered this problem was when I switched to full-screen mode; instead of enlarging the movie to fill the screen like QuickTime Player or VLC, mplayer appeared to reset the screen resolution itself, similar to the way the Mac WMV player does when switching to full-screen mode. As I recall, the menu bar issue first cropped up when switching out of full-screen back to normal mode, and mplayer reset the screen resolution back to 1024x768.
 
Try a sort-of screen reset by changing your screen resolution to something lower, like 640 x 480, then back to normal full-res (1024 x 768)

Another choice, especially if another user login, or safe mode doesn't take care of your menubar issue, is to do an Archive & Install Option of your OS x 10.4 install. Choose that option by booting to your OS X installer, start into your install until you see the screen where you can choose the destination, then click the Options button, and change the settings to Archive & Install, along with the sub-option to keep your files and settings. That's a usually-safe way to reinstall OS X, with little danger of losing any of your files and apps. When that completes, run Software Update again, as your system will be freshly installed to the same version as your installer, so you would need to run Software Update again, probably 3 or 4 times, to return your iBook to fully up-to-date.
 
Actually, I already tried that right after remembering how mplayer ran full-screen... and now that I think of it, that's also the way that the Mac version of Windows Media Player handles full-screen. I wonder if opening a stream in WMP, going to full-screen, then back to normal might reset the menu bar...?

Just wondering... what will the Archive & Install do to my QuickTime upgrade? I spent the better part of a day mud-wrestling that QuickTime issue before finally discovering that updating took care of that bug.
 
Sorry about the disjointed thoughts, here, but... I was also thinking of launching FinalCut Pro, because FCP's got so many menus that it shoves all the right-side indicators out of the way, then replaces them when it quits. Just thinking of what I could do that might force a reset of the right side of the menu bar before I go through all the hassle of an Archive & Install, then updating back to 10.4.11.

Oh, and btw... what options do I choose in Archive & Install to make sure it preserves my updated QuickTime?
 
Just fresh from attempting Archive & Install... and the "Archive & Install" option is unavailable, grayed out.

So, if anyone here has any ideas -- I'm pretty much out, myself, having tried every troubleshooting step suggested -- I'd love to hear 'em.

In the meantime, I still have access to battery status, audio volume, AirPort status and the clock via the System Preferences panels, so this isn't exactly catastrophic. I'll just have live with it, and chalk it up as a learning experience, and stay the hell away from spottily-supported, skanky-behaving Open Source freeware in the future.

(Btw... while mplayer may not have been the actual cause, I can add that on my dual 1.25ghz G4 minitower with 10.3.9, mplayer -- though advertised as able to run on that system -- only played the audio tracks of mpeg4's, along with acting really really skanky. In my own experience so far, VLC Media Player is one of only a handful of FOS OSX free/shareware apps that "does what it says on the tin" without blowing itself to bits and taking a big crap all over my system. As always, though, YMMV.)
 
If you were booted to your OS X 10.4 installed DVD, and you selected the correct destination drive, then it should warn you that you can't install OS X until you change settings, (meaning either an Erase and Install, or the Archive & Install option.
Are you saying that you did NOT get the message that "you can't install OS X without changing settings"?
If so, then you may have other issues (because your only choice then would be an Erase & Install)
But, if you are OK with going ahead without your menubar icons, then so am I...
(I would not choose to use my Mac that way, but then, I'm not you... )
 
I selected a destination drive and clicked "Options", and Installer went to the screen where you choose "Erase & Install", etc. I didn't see a warning box. I clicked "options" and it went straight to the Options panel, where "Archive & Install" was grayed out.

I'm not exactly OK working without the right-hand menubar items, but I'm going to have to go with it for now until I can think of something I haven't tried yet.
 
Just now ran the combo update from a downloaded disk image from Apple. No change.

Looks like I'm going to have to go the downgrade/re-update route some afternoon when I've got nothing else going on.

Thanks for the help, anyway, though; I guess some days you can't even buy a break. (;^>
 
Well, hot damn. diggety. As I often like to joke, "looks like I'm living right with Jesus!"

Rummaging around on discussion.apple.com, I found several threads addressing the vanishing right-side menu item issue, where lots of folks had run down the list of things to try, as I had -- unsuccessfully.

Found a post here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/342491?start=0&tstart=0
...where a user describes attempting to force a re-spawn of search.bundle in /CoreServices. I tried a similar search.bundle trick earlier today, but this one seemed different enough -- it'd require me firing up my wife's old G4 iBook to nab a copy of search.bundle off of it -- to give it another shot.

Through sheer dumb luck while searching for the path to search.bundle on my own iBook, I stumbled over a four year-old copy of search.bundle sitting in a folder in /Documents, along with a bookmark to an old blog post describing how to get rid of Spotlight:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/14/hide-the-spotlight-icon-in-your-menubar/

...so, after resetting some permissions -- I ended up having to drag the "new" search.bundle out of /CoreServices to the Desktop, then copying the "original" into /CoreServices -- I made yet another visit to the Activity Monitor for yet another attempt to force quit SystemUIServer. The difference this time was that instead of being active and absolutely refusing to quit no matter what, this time it appeared to be stone dead, showing 0/0 activity. So -- one more time -- I force quit SystemUIServer, and this time it restarted itself, and whaddya know, there's my menu.

Can't described how relieved I am; I was getting geared up for a grim afternoon of reinstalling and re-reupdating Tiger.
 
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