When I open System Preferences, all I get is the spinning rainbow wheel. Thoughts?
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)
You likely have a corrupted System Preference .plist (preferences) file located in your User/Library/Preferences folder.
Delete it and reboot, restart System Preferences and re-enter your preferences, especially the time and date.
The folder is hidden, so follow these instructions
How do I determine which file (files) is corrupt?
Move the
com.apple.systempreferences.plist
file you can to the Trash and delete it, then reboot the machine.
The other one is locked and can't be Trashed.
I did this, but the wheel is still spinning. It's stuck on "Desktop & Screensaver"
Trash the .plist file again but this time repair permissions and restart your computer. Empty the trash.
this time repair permissions and restart your computer.
DU repair permissions on works on non-user account permissions, the plist file is user account permission.
onefrangolover wrote:
I did this, but the wheel is still spinning. It's stuck on "Desktop & Screensaver"
Did you reboot the machine?
Assuming you did then Trash the
com.apple.desktop.plist
and reboot and try again.
Same way as before.
Deleting the System Preference or other .plist file
What happens is System Preferences loads different preferences files.
Also do the #5 and #6 Steps here, that will repair all file permissions on the machine.
If your still having issues, then do Step #12 and #13 and write down the corrupted .plist files it gives.
Still having issues, then backup user data off the machine to a external storage drive (not only TimeMachine) do #8 Reinstall just OS X over itself or boot into Recovery HD and attempt to Repair the Macintosh HD partition.
I have done everything recommended, and still getting the spinning wheel of death . . .
Thank you for this additional information. I'm not sure which file was corrupt, but the problem is now fixed. Thanks.
Likely the
com.apple.desktop.plist
Glad it worked out for you. 🙂
For me aslo worked when I tried to:
1) Set system preferences to 32-bit mode (right click on system preferences icon, chose informations and check 32-bit mode).
2) Run system preferences in 32-bit mode (if it doesnt open at first time, try again. for me it worked at 2nd try)
3) Close system preferences
4) Set system preferences back to 64-bit mode (uncheck 32-bit mode)
5) Run
For me deleting .plist's didn't work..
system preferences spinning wheel
