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Display settings in System Preferences acting up

I'm having trouble with my Display settings under System Preferences. I am not using an external monitor. My display seems to be working fine, but when I open Display settings to change resolution and colour, weird stuff happens. Basically, I cannot use this preference pane at all.

My display is 1920x1200, but when I open the Display settings, I get two windows, one telling me that "I am about to change [something something], some applications cannot display information correctly if the screen has less than 800x600 pixels", and the other one, the usual main window, telling me that my resolution is now 640x480 (it isn't).

If I hit OK in the extra window that pops up, my resolution changes to 640x480 or something similar, and I am unable to change back unless I reboot. Also, in the main Display settings window, it says <<< DO NOT LOCALIZE >>> under the list of available resolutions, as well as << do not localize >> in the box where I can change refresh rate. None of the buttons seem to be working.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? This was working just fine when I received my new MacBook Pro a few days ago, but now it's not. I've been repairing disk permissions and rebooting, etc.

I have been installing the trial version of Adobe CS5, but had massive problems with this installation (as a lot of people are reporting with CS5 and Snow Leopard...) and uninstalled them again, cleaning out Adobe preference files. Could I have deleted some other important files by accident in this process?

MacBook Pro 17" Core i5, Mac OS X (10.6.3), Brand new Mac

Posted on May 20, 2010 3:12 PM

Reply
6 replies

Jun 6, 2010 9:56 AM in response to Elling

Quit System Preferences, then delete these files or folders.
Users/yourname/Library/Preferences / com.apple.systempreferences.plist
Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/By Host/ com.apple.systempreferences.xxxxx.plist and com.apple.PrefPane.Network.xxxxx.plist (the X's will be numbers)
Also, Users/Home/Library/Caches
Now relaunch System Preferences. Let us know.


User uploaded file
-mj

Jun 7, 2010 12:43 AM in response to macjack

Sorry MacJack, no luck. The folder ByHost already exists, but there are not .plist files such as the ones you told me to delete.

I got rid of the only com.apple.display plist i could find (com.apple.preference.displays2.001b63a1fed6), as you told me, but nothing changed.

I added as details my external monitor, if it could help to find the solution:

DELL WFP 2007

Thanks for your answer. I'll keep on trying things.

Display settings in System Preferences acting up

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