Corrupted trackpad preferences

Question

Level 3

503 points

Corrupted trackpad preferences

In one user account on my MacBook Air, the computer interprets every click of the trackpad as a secondary click. This is problematic because I no longer have a primary click. This does not occur on another user account so I know this is not a hardware issue but rather a software issue.

Can someone tell me where and what preferences files and/or caches I need to delete? Thanks.

MacBook Pro 15" 2.16Ghz Core Duo, 2GB / MacBook Air 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Oct 6, 2008 9:49 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 11, 2008 1:13 AM in response to Conal Ho

I have a similar problem, the TrackPad preferences pane has reverted back to the generic Macbook style. The video on the right isn't present (no pane for it to be shown in) and the three finger gestures aren't available.

I want to re-install the Air Trackpad Preferences, anyone know how?

Bill.

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Answer 2

Soft Reset

Level 4

1,790 points

Oct 7, 2008 12:19 AM in response to Conal Ho

com.apple.KeyboardViewerServer.plist

That's only keychain related to keyboard preferences that I was able to locate in the User > Library > Preferences folder.

The only other suggestion I could think of is that you have secondary click enabled and the trackpad is picking up a second finger on the pad (which converts the trackpad button to a control-click.

If you go into System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad

Do you have "Secondary Click" enabled (checked) under Two Fingers? If so, uncheck that and see if the issue improves.

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Answer 3

Conal Ho Author

Level 3

503 points

Oct 7, 2008 5:07 AM in response to Soft Reset

Yes, secondary click is enabled but that's not the culprit of the problem. It's a corrupted software preferences issue. Not having primary click at all makes working on the Mac OS X next to impossible. After some struggle, I was finally able to delete all the preferences from the preferences folder in my user account and then it worked. Alas, that also meant many of my software registration number was lost.

Then I thought of this. Why not restore from my Time Machine say from last night when nothing was corrupted? I restored the entire preferences folder from last night's backup and everything is working now.

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Answer 4

Conal Ho Author

Level 3

503 points

Oct 7, 2008 5:09 AM in response to Conal Ho

My solution:

I did a restore of my preferences folder from Time Machine. Deleting that KeyboardViewerServer file doesn't solve the problem for some reason. I still haven't figured out where OS X keeps its preferences for the trackpad. Nevertheless, doing a full restore of the preferences folder from an uncorrupted backup worked.

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Answer 5

Soft Reset

Level 4

1,790 points

Oct 7, 2008 11:02 PM in response to Conal Ho

I did some digging around inside plist files and it would appear, the only mention of keyboard/trackpad settings I discovered were located in the follow plist:

com.apple.systempreferences.plist

So perhaps when you did a full restore of the folder it was that file which required replacement.

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Answer 6

Dec 13, 2008 1:16 PM in response to Bill Hodgsonxxxx

This is exactly my problem too - anyone have a solution please??

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