Frank S Bradley

Q: OSX Mavericks System Preference Pane Not Working

I am having an issues with the Systems Preference Pane.  Actions like that provide access to a secondary panel are not appearing.

 

For example the Advanced button on the network pane does nothing.

 

On the Itnernet Accounts panel the Delete accounts action does nothing.  Nor does the display details of an account.

 

The above are just some of the panes that are not operational, I can produce a detailed list of all items that do not operate.

 

Everything worked without issues before the upgrade to Mavericks yesturday morning.

 

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Frank

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 1:27 PM

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Q: OSX Mavericks System Preference Pane Not Working

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  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 11, 2014 12:57 PM in response to Dedo
    Level 5 (7,746 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 11, 2014 12:57 PM in response to Dedo

    Dedo wrote:

     

    Drew-

    Luke's fix worked for me, too, but I'll keep your update handy in case it happens again.

     

    I love the Apple Discussions site.  For years, it's always been the most useful discussion forum I've ever used.   Thanks to everyone for hanging in until the fix was found.  These posts are like gifts that keep on giving.  :-)

    It's like 12 days of gifts but with stuff that is actually useful

     

    The defaults system is a DB of keys & values, so I figure deleting the keys should be safer than setting the values to 'no'. The defaults system should simply read it's own 'default value' if the key doesn't exist in any of the altered DB's (the system has the usual system wide DB & user level DB's).

     

    It's clear that having them set to values Apple didn't test can cause weird issues on new OS's, I expect it'll be a few more OS versions before it comes back around to bite people in other bizarre ways

     

    It's a shame this happens, the defaults system makes the OS much nicer.

  • by Dedo,

    Dedo Dedo Jan 11, 2014 1:11 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 2 (211 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 11, 2014 1:11 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Speaking of default systems in OS ... and this is for another thread I guess, I don't want to hijack this one ... but this fix for System Prefs: Network: Advanced, also fixed my Gatekeeper default.  It would not allow me to select Anywhere for apps downloaded despite the fact that it was from Scottrade's Streaming Quotes .. a site I was able to access for years prior to the Mavericks upgrade.  Now I can ... and, yes, I know ... to be VERY careful with that selected.

  • by yttocs,

    yttocs yttocs Jan 12, 2014 4:53 AM in response to luke_aus
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 12, 2014 4:53 AM in response to luke_aus

    I had already tried just about everything suggested in various posts except taking a look at my guest account or creating a new Admin account to see if the 'button' problem existed there.

     

    I ran the three terminal commands suggested by you;

     

         defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

         defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUseLeopardWindowValues NO

         killall SystemUIServer

     

    And as you stated..."Now its all working again."

     

    I'm not completely positive this was the fix for me as I had also concurently performed a few other things but I do strongly suspect this may have been what worked for me. Sorry I can't be more certain about this, I know better than to get impatient and try more than one fix at a time...I think I just got lucky this time!

     

    Thanks to all for sharing and best wishes for finding your 'fix'.

     

    ST

  • by Dedo,

    Dedo Dedo Jan 12, 2014 5:39 AM in response to yttocs
    Level 2 (211 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jan 12, 2014 5:39 AM in response to yttocs

    If your Safari windows look different and you'd prefer, run:

     

    defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

  • by Ed Hovanec,

    Ed Hovanec Ed Hovanec Jan 30, 2014 10:14 AM in response to Dedo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2014 10:14 AM in response to Dedo

    I have the problem with my Mail window showing grey boxes supered over main title bar and icons/buttons. The following command appears to have solved this in Safari:

     

    defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

     

    Would I be safe to presume that the following command would fix that problem in Mail?

     

    defaults write com.apple.Mail NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

     

    Ed

    Mavericks 10.9.1 Mac Pro 3,1 Early 2008

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 30, 2014 10:24 AM in response to Ed Hovanec
    Level 5 (7,746 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 30, 2014 10:24 AM in response to Ed Hovanec

    That depends on if Mail has that key & it causes the same behaviour.

     

    Anything you can write is possible to read first…

     

    defaults read com.apple.Mail NSUseLeopardWindowValues

    or read everything in Mail's key value settings

    defaults read com.apple.Mail

     

    I'd also suggest the manual…

    man defaults

    will show …https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/ man1/defaults.1.html

     

    Bear in mind the 'global domain' alters settings for ALL users, so it's one way to decern if a change is just inside a user account or not (login as a new user to see if that has the same issue).

  • by Ed Hovanec,

    Ed Hovanec Ed Hovanec Jan 30, 2014 12:37 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 30, 2014 12:37 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Are you saying that "defaults read...etc" will preview the command without executing it?

     

    Ed

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 30, 2014 1:39 PM in response to Ed Hovanec
    Level 5 (7,746 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 30, 2014 1:39 PM in response to Ed Hovanec

    No, I'm saying 'defaults read' will read the current setting.

     

    If you RTM it may become a little clearer…

         read         Prints all of the user's defaults, for every domain, to standard output. 


    The defaults DB is a (somewhat complex) list of settings that apply to Application, user and system 'domains'.

     

    You can go ahead & use the defaults write command if you really want, but settings keys & forgetting about them usually creates these issues years later, hence my suggestion to 'read before you write'.

     

    I'd also consider 'deleting' values instead of setting to 'NO' or 'false' etc, so that the system can simply use it's own default value (as mentioned earlier - https://discussions.apple.com/message/23760753#23760753).

  • by mctosima,

    mctosima mctosima Feb 1, 2014 10:11 PM in response to Frank S Bradley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 1, 2014 10:11 PM in response to Frank S Bradley
  • by Oratsa,

    Oratsa Oratsa Feb 28, 2014 8:35 AM in response to Frank S Bradley
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 28, 2014 8:35 AM in response to Frank S Bradley

    Dear fellows in misery,

     

    same location (GUI), but still slightly different phenomenon, not sure yet, if same issue:

     

    1) since 10.9.1 i guess it's not possible to configure "System Preferences > Internet Accounts" any longer since then i face a rendering issue which simply hides the entries of present accounts.

     

    Same issue for all other local accounts and also new ones.

     

    Attempt to add new accounts by "+" dies in silence.

     

    Looks:

     

    graphicsissue.png

     

    2) Having put all my hopes into OS-X 10.9.2, this vanished today (post upgrade state).

     

    3) Efforts such as the following didn't do the trick either:

     

     

    ==============================================

    sudo defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUseLeopardWindowValues NO

    killall SystemUIServer

     

     

    sudo  defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

    sudo defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

    sudo defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUseLeopardWindowValues YES

    sudo defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool false

    killall SystemUIServer

     

     

     

    defaults read -g AppleUseCoreUI

    2014-02-28 17:12:53.349 defaults[4765:507]

    The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, AppleUseCoreUI) does not exist

     

     

    defaults read com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow

    2014-02-28 17:13:16.241 defaults[4786:507]

    The domain/default pair of (com.apple.screencapture, disable-shadow) does not exist

     

     

    defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues

    2014-02-28 17:13:30.955 defaults[4794:507]

    The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, NSUseLeopardWindowValues) does not exist

     

     

    sudo defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues

    YES

     

     

    sudo defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues

    YES

     

     

    sudo defaults read com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow

    0

    ==============================================

     

    4) Equipment:

     

    Hardware:

    MacBook Pro

    13-inch, Mid 2009

    Processor  2,26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

    Graphics  NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

     

    Software:  OS X 10.9.2 (13C64)

     

     

    5) Any ideas?

     

    All the typical rendering issues others report and do pretty similar do not apply for me.

    All other preference-panel items also work just fine.

     

    Reinstalling is not an option here, since heavily under schedule pressure.

     

     

    Best regards

  • by drhundertwasser,

    drhundertwasser drhundertwasser Oct 27, 2014 7:53 AM in response to Dedo
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apple TV
    Oct 27, 2014 7:53 AM in response to Dedo

    All my smart folders disappeared today, and I couldn't open the preference pane.

     

    I was able to (accidentally) get the preferences pane to work again by:

     

    - logging out of Finder

    - logging in as a new user

    - mail opened as if it was brand new, and asked me to enter my icloud address & password

    - I opened the preference pane in mail, which worked fine

    - logged out of that account

    - logged back into my real user account

    - and I was suddenly able to open the preference pane with in mail

     

    My smart folders which had disappeared still did not reappear, however.

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