system preference -- accounts

Have you tried renaming the preference file for system preferences accounts?

It's location is /Library/Preferences/com.apple.prefrences.accounts.plist

ie:

double click on macintosh hd

double click on library

double click on prefrences

find com.apple.prefrences.accounts.plist

rename com.apple.pfrences.accounts.plist to com.apple.prefrences.accounts.plist.old

then try opening system preferences accounts.

Have you tried checking the console?

Opening the console, selecting "All Message" from the left hand list, then clicking the clearing display icon. At this point, there should be no message displayed in the console. Try opening system preferences accounts. Dose a message show up in the console? if so what is the message?

Folks, I have been having this issue as well with both a MBP and iMac both running 10.6.7.

I have reformatted cleanly, zapped PRAM, booted in safe mode, rebuilt all iLife suite libraries, repair persmissions etc..... nothing seemed to work. One thing that was similar across the both Macs was after clean install, I was installing from a Time Machine backup - all options checked - from Migration Assistant.

Yesterday finally called AppleCare - they told me to go thru same process of format, and before MIgration Assistant, check to see if System Prefs hands again with beach ball - as I left for work today, I had reformatted my drive, just finished running all System Updates (all of them), and I tried and there was no hang - all loaded fine.

I keft my iMac being updated my my previous Time Machine backup, but I selected NOT TO INSTALL NETWORK & SYSTEMS PREFS..... as directed by Apple Tech. They told me they were 95% confident this would solve issue.

So, if anyone is seing this issue and have ALSO restored from Time Machine - may be a good try to fix. Later on today I will come back and advise if I still see any issues after my iMac has been completely updated.

I'm seeing the same issue. "Accounts" never loads and eventually crashes. The message I'm seeing in the console is:

System Preferences[1937]: NSConcreteMutableAttributedString initWithString:: nil value

From what I've heard, re-imagining is the only way to go

What happened to me was that I activated guest access to Drop Box but NO guest login. After this, then I couldn't entered Accounts panel no more. Everytime crashes with same error and just before that, I get this in the Console:

#> System Preferences[356]: NSConcreteMutableAttributedString initWithString:: nil value

Where's now the niutil?, at least I could try revert the change I did. This sounds like a Microsoft Windows issue but in Mac. How on earth can you just change that attribute and get a crash that needs the whole disk to be reformatted????... this is totally MS-Windows solution!

Just had this happen to me today...

Trying to launch the Accounts system preference pane produces the same error in the Console log (as Robert Blade listed):

NSConcreteMutableAttributedString initWithString:: nil value

Apparently, I had three guest accounts:

1. Guest
2. Guest1
3. Guest2

The first one is fine, but 2 and 3 should not be there and not sure how they were created - possibly related to what Cralos mentioned, since I recently done something simliar.

To determine if this is your issue, you can check your accounts by entering this in Terminal:

dscl . -list /Users

To remove the additional guest accounts, this is what I had to do in Terminal:

sudo dscl . -delete /Users/Guest1

sudo dscl . -delete /Users/Guest2

If the above doesn't work, you could also try:

sudo dscl localhost -delete /Local/Default/Users/Guest1

sudo dscl

localhost

-delete

/Local/Default/

Users/Guest2

After deleting the additional guest accounts, I was able to successfully get into the Accounts system preference pane.

^ worked for me; big big thanks for the explanation !