For 2 years I used a personal photo as wallpaper on this MacBook Pro. After installing el capitan, I changed wallpaper. All is fine until I reboot. The OLD wallpaper comes back. I have turned off the machine and removed all power, but still the photo is back. Short of throwing out the laptop, is there a way to have the wallpaper I want?
OBS MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)
Thanks, but that was never checked.
There are several long threads on this problem going back to Mountain Lion. All Apple OS systems have the bug and evidently the programers don't know how to fix it, or weren't asked to. More than a dozen solutions are proposed. None work for my iteration of the problem. I'm not trying to use my photo for desktop, I'm trying to change from that to an Apple desktop choice. I can, but it won't survive a boot.
There have been some silly, and in one case dangerous, proposals put forth. One guy somehow lost a hard drive trying to fix the bug. And every time there's a new OS X they change the name of many of the system files. Suggestions relative to Mountain Lion, for example, call for .plist changes on files el capitan doesn't have under that name, and no where can one go to learn the new name.
OS X beats Windows by a furlong. It would be by 100 miles with the bugs gone.
It maybe that your system preferences plist has become corrupted.
The apple.com.systempreferences.plist is in in the following path.
Macintosh HD/Users/Home/Library/Preferences
The Users Home Library is hidden by default, to view this Library click on Go in the Finder menubar, hold down the alt/ option key and you will see Library will be revealed under Home, click on Library and a new Finder window will open
navigate down to Preferences then drag com.apple.systepreferences.plist to the Trash. Don't delete just yet.
Restart your Mac open System Preferences select the desktop wallpaper you want to use. Restart your Mac, has the new wallpaper been remembered. If it has and you are happy then open System Preferences again as you will need to
go through each preference field and customise as to your liking. Once you have done that and things are back to normal you can delete the older system preferences plist that is in the Trash.
If you are determined to throw your laptop out you can send it to me.
Thanks. That's a plan I can follow. BTW, much earlier today I removed the file com.apple.desktop.plist but nothing visible happened. It's now on the desktop; dunno whether to trash it or put it back.
I would put it back. Try the procedure I mentioned above, if it doesn't work then you can trash your desktop plist file and restart, change your desktop picture, restart and see if that solves your problem.
It is best to do one thing at a time so you then know what made the difference.
Check System Preferences / Desktop & Screen Saver / Desktop tab. Make sure Change Picture (at the bottom) is NOT checked.
el capitan refuses to change wallpaper
