System Report Problem

[jasnw]

Never seen this in almost 20 years of Mac-ing. I was asked to get a printout of the system report for a laptop to diagnose a potential external drive problem. I clicked on the Apple, selected About This Mac, and clicked on System Report. So far, so good. BUT, for whatever reason the Finder continues to retain control of the system Menu Bar in some way that doesn't allow System Information to take over to offer printing and saving-to-file options. The system Menu Bar is dead at that point. I was able to get what I needed running system_profiler in Terminal, but something is not right with the GUI access. This is Monterey 12.5.1 on an MBP 14,1. A power-down and restart didn't help. Any ideas on what to do about this? I would really rather not have to reinstall Monterey to deal with something (apparently) this trivial. I'm not running any third-party GUI tweakers or Finder alternatives.

 

[0128672]

I just tested and couldn't reproduce this issue. I was able to save the System Report (and various subcategories) as a PDF using the print options via command + p. I could also access file save options using command + s to save as an .spx. I'm also on 12.5.1. I don't have a printer connected but there was one configured.

 

[hg.wells]

I was able to replicate the issue on my M1 Mac Air, opening system information from the about menu first time seems to produce this behavior. Clicking on the desktop then closing the System Report window and reopening seemed to resolve the issue.

 

[jasnw]

Ah, the magic touch! Yes, that worked for me as well. So, WTF???

 

[jasnw]

A possibly-pertinent issue is that I'm running this laptop in clamshell mode attached to an external monitor. I'm going to try running it without the monitor and see if that changes anything.

Later - nope, same behavior without the external monitor.

 

[jasnw]

OK, so I'm glad I have a kludge-around, but it makes me wonder if there's something lurking in the OS that's not quite right.

 

[hg.wells]

My OS was freshly reinstalled recently so I wouldn’t over think it.

 

[jasnw]

I won't lose sleep over it. I just hope it's not Siri getting even with me because I won't enable her.

 

[chabig]

Click on the System Information icon in the Dock to bring that app to the front. Then you can print. If clicking the dock icon doesn't bring it forward, click on the desktop first and then click on the dock icon.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

I think this is intended behavior, actually. The About This Mac window is technically part of System Information but it doesn’t show in the Dock or load Menu Bar items. Either that’s supposed to stay the case when you hit the Report button, or it unintentionally stays that way when you open it from there.

 

[jasnw]

Well, it hasn't worked that way in previous editions of macOS, and it doesn't work that way on other Monterey systems. So, WTF???

 

[BanditoB]

I think that Apple changed the behavior in Monterey. If you go to the Apple menu and select About This Mac, you get info about this Mac, but nothing else. If you want System Information, you need to hold down the Option key when selecting the Apple menu or after entering the Apple menu. This will then change About This Mac to System Information and there you get all the bells and whistles.

 

[jasnw]

Well, they only half changed it. The display that pops up for About This Mac also shows the "System Report ..." button that it always has, and if you click on it the full system report comes up. However, it doesn't bring up the System Information menus on the main menu bar until you do the "pump fake" discovered by hg.wells. As you say, if I hold down the option key while I click on the Apple menu it does show System Information in the menu instead of About This Mac, and if you select that item the system report that comes up does have a live menu. Behaves like a biffed implementation.

 

[0128672]

Well, they only half changed it. The display that pops up for About This Mac also shows the "System Report ..." button that it always has, and if you click on it the full system report comes up. However, it doesn't bring up the System Information menus on the main menu bar until you do the "pump fake" discovered by hg.wells. As you say, if I hold down the option key while I click on the Apple menu it does show System Information in the menu instead of About This Mac, and if you select that item the system report that comes up does have a live menu. Behaves like a biffed implementation.

Yes, I was now able to reproduce what you're describing, but it's simple to just add the System Information app to one's dock if it's something you use regularly. This avoids the issue.

 

[jasnw]

It is not an issue since I now know the new way to get this info. To me this is just another reminder that Apple's software QC program leaks a bit. That "System Report" button should either work as expected or be gone. Since there's a new way to obtain this, I'm assuming "gone" is the correct answer. Which begs the question of "why change something that was working just fine?"