iChat options greyed out

Users have periodically reported a problem with iChat where the program functions (menus, buttons, buddy lists, etc) will appear greyed out. The program launches but is otherwise nonfunctional.

Apple Discussions poster hanns writes:

"I got my first mac about a month ago and had not even opened iChat until today. When I click on any of the drop down menus almost all of the options are blanked out, and all of the buttons at the bottom of my bonjour list are also greyed out."

We previously reported on this problem, and at the time, fixes revolved around the iChat's localization settings. As such, and especially since the problem revolved around non-english languages, changing the default languages and limiting application-specific localization options was the primary fix for the issue.

Currently english users have been experiencing the problem, indicating there may be more than language packs contributing to the problem.

Fix: Boot into safe mode and repair permissions While users have tried repairing permissions on the drive as a possible fix, when the computer is booted into safe mode various maintenance scripts will run that may have helped users overcome this problem. To do this, hold the "shift" key down at bootup, and when logged in open Disk Utility and run the permissions fix routine on the boot drive. Restarting the computer after these steps has restored iChat for some affected users.

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