Screensaver source says Loading... for ever

I tried this but it didn't work. Instead I can now choose neither one of the default savers nor anything from my iPhoto library...

Can you tell me what to paste into my terminal to undo this step? Is that possible?!

That would be much appreciated!

I'd rather come up with another workaround than not being able to choose any slideshow as screenssaver... :-(

Thanks!

You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved and is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

If the .plist is in the Trash, return it to your user Library/Preferences. Restart your computer to generate a new .plist.

Open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and paste this command

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver.plist

press 'return' on your keyboard.

Restart the mac and test for the problem.

Any improvement?

Thanks, I had the exact same issue and your suggestion fixed it.

I tried this solution and it did not work for me. I am very annoyed and ****** off that I upgraded.

I will not be upgrading my Mac Book Pro until this is fixed.

The slow-down is likely caused by an old plug-in like Perian or something like that. On the bottom row of System Preferences pane is a list of your 3rd party preference plug-ins.

You can remove them by finding them in here:

/Library/ Extensions / Internet Plug-Ins

and/or here:

~/Library/PreferencePanes

Don't forget to remove any of them that are listed in here too:

 > System Preferences... Users & Groups | Login Items

It won't get fixed unless you fix it. The problem is not with ML itself but a conflict with something you've installed. No way to know what that is unless you start a new thread and ask for help (notice that this one has been marked as answered so a lot of people who can help you won't look in).

I got it to work by upgrading iPhoto to the latest iLife 11 version. Incompatibilities such as this should be flagged by Apple upfront instead of confusing the wobble out of people. It seems to work fine now.

Thanks, softwater - this fixed the problem for me too! Wonderful stuff!

🙂

Woke up this morning - and the problem's back again. I can't believe I need to go into Terminal every day to make the screensaver / photo option work. Not happy!

By coincidence, I'm seeing this problem too as of yesterday when I did a clean isntall on an external disk. The screensaver wants access to my internal disk in order to load the photos and I keep getting a password request to give it that access.

I haven't yet tracked down the cause of this. Console says there is some problem with iLifeMediaBrowser and that one of the programming calls from System Preferences is deprecated in 10.8. This suggests maybe that Sys Prefs is searching for or using some old plist file on my internal disk, or trying to load an old screensaver that its detected. In your case, I'm guessing that its a remnant from the system before you updated (unless like me you're got more than one OS installed on more than one volume).

I don't have a solution for you (or myself yet). I've tried trashing both com.apple.desktop.plist and com.apple.systempreferences.plist in the ~/Library/Prefs folder without success. Unfortunately, I'm going to be tied up with work things for most of the day, but I'll get back on to this as soon as I have time.

In the meanwhile, if anyone else has any suggestions, I'd appreciate some help with the legwork! 😀

Hi softwater

Sorry to hear you now have the same problem. Frustrating, isn't it?

I only have one OS installed on my MBP.

I was using a separate Dropbox folder for all my screensaver photos. When problems arose, I tried moving the folder to the Pictures folder within my home folder. The problem persisted.

What's really strange is that I don't recall seeing the new display options within System Preferences / Screen Saver after first upgrading to Mountain Lion and I am almost certain that it was using the same options as from 10.7 - most peculiar.

The new options were shown when the problems arose.

I have deleted every third part app (Perian / Xmarks etc.) from System Preferences. I have restarted the MBP 3 times.

The problem persists.

I am more than happy to help with legwork / testing if you can tell me what to do. However, I am not technical! 😀

Hi Edward,

Well, I've solved the problem in my own case, but I'm none the wiser as to the real cause and I don't think I've got any ideas how to help you with yours. I'll describe my situation below in case it gives any wiser minds a clue as to the problem or the commonalities between our set ups.

Here's a selection of the Console error messages that may offer some clues:

12/08/2012 19:32:32.932 System Preferences[3261]: Attempted search for modules of unknown type (4)

12/08/2012 19:33:19.380 System Preferences[3261]: httpdEnabled is deprecated !!

12/08/2012 19:33:35.628 coreservicesd[78]: Application App:"System Preferences" [ 0x0/0x233233] @ 0x0x7facc2e98bd0 tried to be brought forward, but isn't in fPermittedFrontASNs ( ( ASN:0x0-0x237237:) ), so denying.

12/08/2012 19:33:35.634 WindowServer[110]: [cps/setfront] Failed setting the front application to System Preferences, psn 0x0-0x233233, securitySessionID=0x186a4, err=-13066

12/08/2012 19:33:37.686 System Preferences[3261]: httpdEnabled is deprecated !!

12/08/2012 19:34:09.832 System Preferences[3261]: httpdEnabled is deprecated !!

13/08/2012 00:24:42.199 System Preferences[4092]: Attempted search for modules of unknown type (4)

13/08/2012 00:24:45.907 System Preferences[4092]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:24:45.907 System Preferences[4092]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:25:02.982 System Preferences[4221]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:25:02.983 System Preferences[4221]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:26:21.327 System Preferences[4248]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:26:21.328 System Preferences[4248]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:29:09.827 System Preferences[4282]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:29:09.827 System Preferences[4282]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.

13/08/2012 00:30:00.913 System Preferences[4282]: Attempted search for modules of unknown type (4)

13/08/2012 00:30:10.303 System Preferences[4282]: **** DesktopPref error: DSKiPhotoRootSource -loadData TIME OUT!!! There something wrong with iLife Media Browser

What was happening with me was that I kept getting a request everytime I clicked on the 'Desktop & Screensaver' pref to unlock the encrypted home user account on another disk. If I ignored that request (neither accept nor cancel), I'd get the 'loading' error you report. If I accepted it, everything was fine.

I ran a terminal command which lets me see what files were open on that disk both when I did and didn't accept the request. Though it showed some activity in the System libraries on that disk when I accepted the request (odd in itself), it never showed any activity in the encrypted home user account. Highly mysterious.

Seeing as I had that internal disk backed up on another physically disconnected disk, I thought I'd experiment and see what happened if I erased it. Incredibly, Sys Prefs started behaving normally!

I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if any more info comes to light, but right now I'm as stumped as you are. 😟

Just had a thought. Create a new user account in

 > System Preferences > Users & Groups

Log out of your current account and into the new account. Test Sys Prefs, same problem?

If no, log back into the account with the problem and delete the Cache.db file here:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.systempreferences/Cache.db

(If you're not confident about deleting, it just move it (the Cache.db file only, I mean) to the Desktop, then you can put it back later if it makes no difference).

Log out and log back in again. Test. Any change?