Tiger help! Why are my wireless and spotlight icons missing from the upper right hand corner of my toolbar?

December 30, 2007 1:35 PM

Tiger help! Why are my wireless and spotlight icons missing from the upper right hand corner of my toolbar?

I run Mac OS X 10.4.11 on my 12" powerbook g4. When I turned on my computer today, the spotlight and wireless icons were missing from my toolbar.

I can access the spotlight through finder. However, I can't connect to the internet. Please help me fix this!

Thanks!

posted by radiocontrolled to computers & internet (9 answers total)

Well first of all, items should not be disappearing from the menubar. Have you tried rebooting the computer?

Second, there is a checkbox to turn on the Airport menubar item in the System Preferences.

Go to: Apple menu > System Preferences > Network > Show:Airport > The "Show AirPort status in menubar" checkbox is at the bottom. Make sure that is checked.

I know that if you disable Spotlight, it can cause odd behavior with the menu items sometimes. You may want to check that.

You may wish to peruse this Mac OS X Hints thread as well.
posted by -t at 1:53 PM on December 30, 2007

I've rebooted a couple of times, and done what you've suggested by making sure the airport status is shown in the menubar by going through system preferences, & using the lock to secure these changes, etc.

In the end, the airport status is still not showing.
posted by radiocontrolled at 2:07 PM on December 30, 2007

Okay, try going to: /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras, and try double clicking on an actual menu item to launch it. For instance, Airport.menu in your case.

If it does not launch, or you don't see it, have a look at the link I posted previously, and maybe this one as well.

One more thing, if you download Tinkertool, it has an "update menubar" button. You can try using that if the two threads I posted seem overwhelming.

I unfortunately have to run out now, but I'll check back in later. Best of luck.
posted by -t at 2:27 PM on December 30, 2007

thanks -t for all your help so far. (I think, after reading those links you posted, that this mess is related to me downloading a version of front row...)

when I went into menu extras, all the icons were gone. there were just things like "airport.menu", but nothing happened when I tried to launch them :o(

Unfortunately Tinkertool didn't work.

I have tried re-installing OS X updates 10.4.5, up until 10.4.11. My computer's hard drive has 32.1 Gb free, yet when I try to install an update that is 37.9 MB, it says my system doesn't meet the requirements, which confuses me.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. (would just moving on to leopard get rid of this problem..?)Thanks !
posted by radiocontrolled at 3:07 PM on December 30, 2007

Are you missing just those two icons, or everything else in the menu bar as well? Here's a discussion thread that discusses a similar problem.

I would also check your console after a restart (Applications -> Utilities -> Console) or force a restart of SystemUIServer and check the console for error messages.

Good luck!
posted by jasminerain at 4:43 PM on December 30, 2007

Hey! I just checked the error messages in the console. Looks like stuff keeps on crashing:

Library/Logs/CrashReporter/SystemUIServer.crash.log
Dec 30 18:58:35 Alison-Benjamin crashdump[413]: SystemUIServer crashed
Dec 30 18:58:36 Alison-Benjamin crashdump[413]: crash report written to: /Users/alisonbenjamin/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/SystemUIServer.crash.log

etc.

What should I do..?

Thanks
posted by radiocontrolled at 6:59 PM on December 30, 2007

I would check the crash report and see what it says. Then look up the error message it gives on Google, to see how to fix your SystemUIServer.
posted by jasminerain at 7:20 PM on December 30, 2007

hmm. I would probably run Disk Utility and repair permissions and check the harddisk first. If that does not help, I would find Preferential treatment and run that (google it). Then I would find and run Onyx or Yasu to get rid of old cache and to run the unix-jobs. That would normally bring me a long way, but tell us how it goes.
posted by KimG at 10:27 PM on December 31, 2007

Just checking in radiocontrolled. I second KinG's Onyx suggestion to clear the caches, let us know how it goes/went.
posted by -t at 3:57 PM on January 1, 2008