System Prefs not opening

I am having a similar issue after upgrading to Snow Leopard. System Preferences hangs in opening about 75% of the time and must then be 'Force Quit'. It will open fine after a system restart but after a while stops responding again. It does not appear to be associated with/triggered by any other particular application or process. Have performed permission repair, no problems found. Any ideas?

HI John,

Try deleting this file.

com.apple.preferencespanes.cache

It's here...

/Users/YourName/Library/Caches

Drag that file from the Caches folder to the Trash, empty the Trash and restart your Mac.
Try opening System Preferences now.

If that doesn't work, go to /Users/YourName/LIbrary/Caches. Where you see:
com.apple.systempreferences, click the discovery triangle so it faces down.
You will see: Cache.db Drag that file to the Trash, empty the Trash.








Carolyn 🙂

Deleting the preferencepanes.cache file seems to have fixed it for me. Thanks Carolyn!

You're welcome. 🙂

Carolyn's fix worked for me also. My System Preferences was unresponsive 100% of the time, even after restart. I'm only reporting this here because I'm hoping Apple will notice and get us a fix. Thank you Carolyn!!!! I had tried dumping the preferences file, but wouldn't have thought of the cache.

Thanks Carolyn, Your fix worked for me too.

Hi John, I am also still having issues even after trashing that file. My solution is to launch System Preference from the  dropdown menu or from the applications folder. For some reason this works, while the dock icon doesn't.

Add me to the list... has been happening since 10.6; hoped 10.6.1 would fix it, no.. and now, not even 10.6.2
Same thing, 1st launch of System Prefs has to be Force Quit, 2nd time works.
Sometimes it seems that if I remember to open it from dock by going to popout list and directly to 1 of the items from list, instead of just clicking on System Prefs to go to ALL, this works. Keep sending report to Apple, just in case this helps.

You can add me to the list too. Just started happening today. Do any of you use Medialink? It first happened to me when I was opening it in System Preferences...

This is amazingly annoying. Hope someone out there has a fix!

Just to note.. my System Preferences were needing force quit - immmediately after Fresh Erase & Install of Snow Leopard, without any extras added on.

Try [resetting your PRAM/NVRAM|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US]. If no joy, then follow the [steps here including resetting your SMC if necessary|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1543]. Note that resetting you SMC is not odds-on to fix your problem. But, why not try it.