We’ve all been there. You have a piece of hardware that has served you faithfully for years, but suddenly, it starts acting like it’s ready for retirement.

My “home” PC is a 2016 MacBook Pro running macOS Monterey. It’s my hub for personal research, writing, doing taxes, editing photos, and diving into new programming languages. But lately, things took a turn for the worse.

The Death Spiral

After the latest OS upgrade, my reliable workhorse became a sluggish, unstable mess. The symptoms were bizarre:

• The Invisible Menu: My top menu bar completely disappeared.
• App Hangs: Simple applications would freeze or “spinning beachball” for no reason.
• General Sluggishness: Every click felt like it was traveling through molasses.

I started shopping. I figured the hardware just couldn’t keep up with modern software anymore. A decent replacement for my needs was going to cost around $1,500. I was ready to pull the trigger, spend the money, and face the grueling task of migrating all my data and apps to a new machine.

The Research Phase

Before committing to the $1,500 spend, I decided to put on my “Technic Alley” hat and do some digging. I searched for why a top menu bar would just vanish. Most “help” videos suggested checking display settings or accessibility toggles, but none of those were the culprit.

Then, I found a suggestion that sounded like a long shot: Resetting the NVRAM.

What is NVRAM?

NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory) is a small amount of memory your Mac uses to store certain settings for quick access, such as speaker volume, screen resolution, startup-disk selection, and recent kernel panic information. Sometimes, during an OS upgrade, this data can become “corrupted,” leading to the exact kind of UI glitches I was seeing.

The “Boom” Moment

I shut down the Mac, turned it back on, and immediately held down Option + Command + P + R for about 20 seconds.

Boom. My MacBook was back.

The menu bar reappeared, the sluggishness evaporated, and the system stability returned to 100%. Just like that, my “home PC” was back in action, and that $1,500 stayed in my bank account.

The Result

Since that reset, I’ve been more active with my blog than ever. I’ve posted nearly a dozen articles recently (including this one!) all from the very machine I was ready to recycle a week ago.

The Lesson: Before you assume “planned obsolescence” has claimed your tech, try the deep-level resets. You might just save yourself a fortune.