Troubleshooting Stuffit Deluxe 7.0: Magic Menu

Magic Menu Matthew Covington, Senior Product Manager for StuffIt Deluxe at Aladdin Systems, sent MacFixIt a detailed guide to properly installing and operating Magic Menu under Mac OS X 10.1-10.2.1:

"Magic Menu should be compatible with all versions of Mac OS X from 10.1 onwards, including Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.2.1. An issue that users are likely to encounter, however, is that Magic Menu won't automatically load after installation on 10.2 and later. Changes to Menu Extras, made by Apple, in Mac OS 10.2 mean that it is necessary for us to load additional resources before the Magic Menu can be displayed. These resources are only available once you have logged out and logged back into your OS X account. Once you log back in you can load Magic Menu by double clicking the MagicMenu.menu file located in your StuffIt Deluxe install folder. Once MagicMenu has been loaded once, it will automatically load at Startup until you choose to unload it. To unload Magic Menu, and prevent it from loading at startup, simply hold down the command key and drag it out of the menu bar.

If MagicMenu still does not load, the cause may be an older version present on your system. Open the System Preferences dialog, and click 'LogIn Items'. If MagicMenu is displayed as a Log In item, remove it from the list. After you have done this, also delete the old version of MagicMenu from your previous StuffIt Deluxe install folder just to be sure. Most of the cases that we have encountered where MagicMenu 7.0 fails to load, an older version of MagicMenu is responsible.

If MagicMenu still won’t load, it’s possible that another 3rd party Menu Extra is responsible for the problem. Check the following folder: Library/InputManagers/ If you find items other than MagicMenuEnabler in this folder, it’s possible that it is conflicting with MagicMenu. Send an email to stuffitpm@aladdinsys.com and let me know what you’ve got loaded. So far, we have not been able to reproduce a conflict with any other 3rd party items, but its possible that this is responsible. Magic Menu 7.0 works by loading the StuffIt Contextual menu in the menu bar, and it's possible that a conflict with another Contextual menu plugin is responsible for Magic Menu no loading. If you have other 3rd party contextual menu items loaded, again, let us know what they are.

Finally, Magic Menu is an entirely optional part of StuffIt Deluxe. All the functionality of the Magic Menu is available via the StuffIt Contextual menu. If you want to avoid the additional overhead of running a Menu Extra, the contextual menu will continue to function even if Magic Menu is not loaded. The only functionality that does require Magic Menu are the Command Key shortcuts (Command-S to Stuff, Command-U to Unstuff). Again, to remove Magic Menu, simply Command-Click and drag the icon off the menu bar."