Bug #161: Conflict with other third-party menu extras (MenuMeters, MenuCracker etc)

Here is a user email that I received today, with my comments interspersed. The original user's comments are marked "***":

• **I was using WinSwitch 2.0 fine, but when I installed 3.0 I got this

problem

I don't think it's anything to do with 2.0 vs 3.0. Sounds like you've got a conflict with other software, and you're seeing it in 3.0 because of the order in which things got installed.

• **When I restart or logout and log back in, the WinSwitch menu does

not automatically load. I installed according to the instructions, including running Activate WinSwitch frmo the /Users/Shared/ directory (I ran this as my user, and also from Terminal via sudo). I get these errors in Terminal (also, below these log snippets, I describe a possible, unrelated conflict):

• **/Users/Shared/Activate\ WinSwitch.command; exit

[g4d800:~] mike% /Users/Shared/Activate\ WinSwitch.command; exit Deactivating menu extra with identifier "com.apple.menuextra.appleuser" ... Success. Deactivating menu extra with identifier "net.sourceforge.menucracker" ... Success. Deactivating menu extra with identifier "com.wincent.WinSwitch" ... Success. Activating menu extra with bundle path "/Library/Menu Extras/WinSwitch.menu" after item number -1 ... Failure. Error: fatal error while adding bundle "/Library/Menu Extras/WinSwitch.menu" aborting processing Activating menu extra with bundle path "/Library/Menu Extras/WinSwitch.menu" after item number -1 ... Failure. Error: fatal error while adding bundle "/Library/Menu Extras/WinSwitch.menu" aborting processing logout [Process completed]

Looks like there is some other software which is interfering. From your console log I see you have quite a few third party menu extras. Does WinSwitch appear in the menu bar after you click the "Activate WinSwitch" command?

• **And I get this is the Console after restart:

... 2005-03-24 15:05:41.222 SystemUIServer[478] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded) 2005-03-24 15:05:44.166 SystemUIServer[478] MenuCracker: Loading 'MenuMeterCPUExtra'. 2005-03-24 15:05:48.495 SystemUIServer[478] MenuMeterCPU loaded. 2005-03-24 15:05:48.558 SystemUIServer[478] MenuCracker: Loading 'MenuMeterNetExtra'. 2005-03-24 15:05:50.565 SystemUIServer[478] MenuMeterNet loaded.

Looks like there is a clash. You seem to have two copies of MenuCracker running on your system. One that's bundled with WinSwitch and another that's bundled with MenuMeters. The MenuMeters one is getting loading first (above), and then the WinSwitch one gets loaded (below).

• **2005-03-24 15:06:50.202 SystemUIServer[640]

   MenuCracker
   see http://sourceforge.net/projects/menucracker
   MenuCracker is now loaded. Ready to accept new menus. Ignore the

failure message that follow. 2005-03-24 15:06:50.271 SystemUIServer[640] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded) 2005-03-24 15:06:50.292 SystemUIServer[640] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (not yet loaded) 2005-03-24 15:06:50.292 SystemUIServer[640] MenuCracker: Loading 'WOWinSwitchMenuExtra'. 2005-03-24 15:06:50.404 SystemUIServer[640] WinSwitchHelper launched 2005-03-24 15:06:50.405 SystemUIServer[640] WinSwitch.menu loaded. 2005-03-24 15:06:50.628 SystemUIServer[640] MenuCracker: Loading 'MenuMeterCPUExtra'. 2005-03-24 15:06:51.550 SystemUIServer[640] MenuMeterCPU loaded. 2005-03-24 15:06:51.641 SystemUIServer[640] MenuCracker: Loading 'MenuMeterNetExtra'. 2005-03-24 15:06:51.711 SystemUIServer[640] MenuMeterNet loaded. 2005-03-24 15:06:51.832 SystemUIServer[640] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded)

Evidently the fact that two copies are running on your system is what's causing the problem. Here's what I see in my own log, which is what you should be seeing too:

2005-03-22 17:27:12.764 SystemUIServer[424] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded) 2005-03-22 17:27:12.792 SystemUIServer[424] MenuCracker: Loading 'WOWinSwitchMenuExtra'.

   MenuCracker
   see http://sourceforge.net/projects/menucracker
   MenuCracker is now loaded. Ready to accept new menus. Ignore the failure message that follow.

2005-03-23 11:28:15.768 SystemUIServer[8347] failed to load Menu Extra: NSBundle (loaded) 2005-03-23 11:28:15.774 SystemUIServer[8347] MenuCracker: Loading 'WOWinSwitchMenuExtra'.

If you compare the two logs you can see that in your case things aren't going as you'd expect. Things are getting loaded twice in some cases, or not at all.

• **I also notice that after I run Activate WinSwitch, Prefling

(http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/prefling/index.html) no longer works.

Activating WinSwitch requires that the SystemUIServer be restarted. Perhaps Prefling isn't coping with that. Does it work when you relaunch it?

I will make an entry for this in the bug tracking database. It may be possible to work around this conflict in a future version. For now I don't know of any work around, other than to uninstall one of the pieces of conflicting software.