System Preferences Freeze

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Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi,

I am having a problem with System Preferences freezing up when selecting Desktop & Screen Saver. Everything else on the system works fine.



I loaded a picture on the Macintosh HD Device (all other pictures are under a specific user account) to access it as a desktop background. The correct picture appears as the desktop background, but I want to change the picture. As soon as I select Desktop & Screen Saver under System Preferences the window freezes.

The only way to unfreeze is to select something else on the Dock (which doesn't magnify as it normally does), then close that and go to back to System Preference and then close it. Or select something else from the dock and then Force Quit the Systems Preferences.



I will get an error message and the problem details (which I know VERY little about) show an Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) and

Exception Code: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS

If that helps.



I tried sending the picture to the trash and then reloading it, but that didn't help either.



Any ideas on how to get back the the default or fix this problem are greatly appreciated.

Thank you!



iMac 2 GHz 2 Duo upgraded to 10.5.1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    remove the followinf files and restart you mac



    Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist



    That should at least reset the system preferences to default



    For the desktop/screensaver remove



    Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist



    After a restart all should be back to default settings.



    It sounds like something maybe causing some problems another thing to check is also disk utility and run a HD check if there are errors strange things can happen. If any are found you will need to boot from the install DVD and run disk uitility and repair HD from that. Be sure if you use this never to do a permissions repair at the same time it can really screw things up.



    I hope this info helps
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  • Reply 2 of 2
    rob05au,

    Thanks for the reply. That worked perfectly! I had run some disk utilities earlier and they checked fine.

    Thanks again!
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