the System Preferences not responding

Hello,

See this article on how to get into your own Home Library folder...

http://www.macworld.com/article/1161156/view_library_folder_in_lion.html

Safe Boot , (holding Shift key down at bootup), use Disk Utility from there to Repair Permissions, test if things work OK in Safe Mode.

Then move these files to the Desktop for now...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

Reboot & test.

PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.

If that doesn't help...

Open Console in Utilities & see if there are any clues or repeating messages when trying Sys Prefs.