Could not load display preference pane Yosemite

OMG, you beautiful beautiful man. I LOVE you. This worked!!!! WOOOOOOOO

Thank you! This solution is perfect. The display is upward again！

This helped me too! The bug was horrible...

In case anyone else finds this thread, I've since found the correct solution. There is no need to download anything.

Restart the computer in safe mode. Certain caches maintained by the system will be rebuilt.

Safe mode is much slower to start up than normal. The next normal startup may also be somewhat slow.

When the login screen appears, restart as usual (not in safe mode) and test. There's no need to log in while in safe mode.

Note: If FileVault is enabled in OS X 10.9 or earlier, or if a firmware password is set, or if the startup volume is a software RAID, you can’t start in safe mode. In that case, ask for instructions.

I received the same message after updating to 10.10.4. Safe boot didn't work. Cleaning caches with onyx didn't work. A full download and reinstall of 10.10.4 from the App Store fixed the issue for me.

For anyone else who has tried everything and finds this thread...

If you have tried:

Safe Boot

Check in Different Admin + Guest Account

Copy in a known good 'Displays' Pref Pane

Permission Repair

SMC / PRAM Resets

Delete Display Prefs

Delete Display db's

Use 3rd Party Res Switcher

Use 3rd Party Display Rotate (did work but only to the point it would bring up the non-retina pane - quit and reopen sys prefs and the issue reverted)

...and nothing has worked (but not yet done either a system restore or re-overlay from Recovery)

What will work (and is not quite as invasive/daunting for some as the System Restore Options) is a 10.10.4 Combo Update. Download, Install, Repair Permissions and you are done.

For Reference:

My issue was caused due to a bug when updating to the 33b and 36b beta builds from either the quarzi 10.10.3 (2xxx) or the 26 beta build of 10.10.4 on a MBP11,4. The issue was resolved in the 46 release version of 10.10.4 but not in the delta update. The Combo update resolves.... As to exactly what is causing this or, indeed, the file/pref/config that is at the heart of the issue - afraid I am uncertain. Normally I will work till I get the answer but as this is such a rare issue for myself and a simple fix has been located - I will not be putting any more time into it.

Hope this helps anyone googling to get a solution...

[ I HAVE THE FIX ]

I had this problem 30 minutes ago, It was a terrible shock because it happened on my brother's computer after telling him about this rotation trick. His display got stuck upside down and the error message "could not open display preferences pane" kept showing up. To fix it I reset his PRAM which seemed to do nothing, then I shut down the computer, waited a while, and booted it in safe mode. There I had access to all the display preferences and after restarting the computer the display was back to its default setting.

TL;DR 1. shut down the computer 2. wait a minute 3. Launch in Safe Mode by holding Shift after the tone. 4. Correct settings and restart computer 5. Feel the relief

I'd just like to point out that this actually worked for me as well. 2013 MBPr running 10.11.1.

Solution was to boot into Safe Mode, but for whatever reason I couldn't boot into Safe Mode by holding Shift on restart so I had to apply boot arguments using terminal commands; Luckily..

sudo nvram boot-args="-x"

to set the Safe Boot, and..

sudo nvram boot-args=""

to remove the arguments still worked in 10.11.

The screen will blink and flash a couple times as you log in, which is seemingly normal.

Good luck to anyone else who runs into this problem. That's two hours of my life I'll never get back. 😠