I started playing about choosing different backgrounds for my desktop and then all of a sudden I got the dreaded spinning wheel. Worse than: it won't go away. It says it is loaded images. I left it for over two hours, but it hadn't got anywhere. I did Force-Quit, restarted and tried again - now Systems Preferences>Desktop comes up with the spinning wheel. I have tried this three times now.
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), May only relate to Preview
Try to delete your Desktop settings file. To do it, open a Finder window, select Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type ~/Library/Preferences. Then, delete "com.apple.desktop.plist" and "com.apple.systempreferences.plist", and restart. Finally, you will be able to go to System Preferences > Desktop and Screensaver
Ah. I went to Library>Systems>Preferencepane and deleted the systems desktop preference. This had the wonderful result of removing the Desktop icon from my Systems Preferences altogether. Fortunately, I had only put it Trash and not actually trashed it so I was able to put it back again. I'll try it your way and get back.
Problem: there is no com.apple.desktop.plist in my Library>Preferences. There are
com.apple.screensaver.plist
com.apple.screensaver.plist.lockfile
but I don't think they would be related to the desktop background.
Aha! Wrong Library. This time I went to the library using your GOTO method and now all is well. Many thanks.
A new worry. Even though the Desktop thing is working fine now, I have just noticed a new icon that has appeared on my screen (or desktop) called "DesktopScreenEffectsPref.PrefPane". I am not quite sure what to do with this. Would it be safe to trash it? Should I put it into Preferences and, if so, which one? Panic😕
Anybody got any ideas about this Pane?
You somehow copied a system component to the Desktop. You can delete the copy.
Thank you. I guessed it would be OK, but as I said earlier on, I had put one pane into Trash and my entire Desktop Preferences thing disappeared - luckily I hadn't emptied the Trash.
"Thank You Linc!"
I appreciate your help, this worked!
Is there something specificI did that caused this, I can beware of it in the future.
You're directions are always straight forward and precise.
My systems preferences is hanging
