Menu bar - no items, Apple menu not working!!! - HELP!

[tpouliot]

I have been dealing with AppleCare and they seem to be a little stumpted, so I am going to try everyone else.

When I boot up, I no longer get the items in the menu bar like date, time, wireless, bluetooth status, etc.

In the Apple Menu, things like "About this Mac", reboot, shut down, etc. Do nothing.

System Preferences gives me a beachball.

I have just recently did a CLEAN install. The install worked fine.
I then changed the time to EST and updated to 10.5.7. I did not do all the other updates...wanted to take it slow.

I am back to the issue again!

There is nothing installed on this computer other than Leopard!

It is a 15" Macbook Pro 4GB memory, Intel processor...etc.

At first Apple thought a 3rd party app may have corrupted some preferences. This can not be the case....

Thoughts? Could it be bad hardware??? The machine is just over 2 years old.

 

[MacDawg]

What is your RAM situation?
Did you upgrade it?
Is it stock?

Have you reset the PRAM?

Info on resetting the PRAM

What is stored in PRAM

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[SHADO]

Did you try using a utility like AppleJack, DiskWarrior, or Drive Genius 2? Also, did you try repairing permissions in Disk Utility?

 

[tpouliot]

I have not tried any of these utilities.

I have tried permissions and repair disk. I have also created a "test" account and that user has the same issue.

The memory is not stock, this was upgraded 2 years ago to 4GB. Bought the memory from newegg. It was working for 2 years, usually when memory is good, it is good.

Did you try using a utility like AppleJack, DiskWarrior, or Drive Genius 2? Also, did you try repairing permissions in Disk Utility?

 

[madog]

Each of those items has an option to show in the menu bar. In the Date and Time, the network/airport, and the bluetooth system preferences.

Usually they are enabled by default, but to check the easiest thing first, I would go into those settings and douible check that the "...Show in Menu Bar" option is enabled for each of those.

Usually they can take a while to load depending ont he extras loaded (though you wouldn't with a clean instal).

Bah... well you say the Sys Prefs beach ball..... Well, if I were you, I would boot back up to your system dvd, open disk utility, and then click on the drive on the left and then click the Partition tab. Change the partition pull down from "Current", to "1" or whatever, set the format, give it a name, then click Apply.

I believe this does a little more than just the basic "Clean Install" which just erases the drive where as changing the partition option in DU rebuilds it.

Whether or not that matters at all..... I don't know. But at this point it won't hurt..... unless it just kills your drive in which case it was already dying.