ADMIN CAN'T UNLOCK SYSTEM PREFS!!! THIS IS A BUG, PEOPLE!

Question

Ever since I upgraded to Maverick, I haven't been able to change my locked system preferences. They just won't unlock, no matter what I do. Everywhere I've gone to get some clarity on this problem, all anybody asks is if I'm the Admin, like I'm some kind of moron who doesn't know that if you click the lock and enter your password, the lock will unlock. Yes, I'm the Admin, mine is the only account on my MacBook Pro, everything worked fine before I upgraded, and now what I get is this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubGAD-v_ODs
For those of you who require a visual of the problem to see that it's NOT happening because users just don't know how to work the lock, I beg you…please look at this 7 second YouTube video. Every lock in system preferences behaves just like this. That's the only consistency I've found. I've been researching this for days now and while it seems that tons of people are having the same problem, completely unable to either lock or unlock their preference settings, nobody anywhere seems to have a clue as to how to definitively fix this problem. It's not Maverick because I've read posts from other users who are complaining about the same behavior from Lion and Mountain Lion. I've exhausted what little Unix I know with killall commands and I'm tired of shooting in the dark, trying solutions that work for some people but haven't worked at all for me.
I'm not a new user. I've been using Macs since the first Macs came out, so I know how to click the lock to change my preferences. It's not my keychain as I've already done repairs on that. I've restarted every time I tried something new, but that didn't help. The fixes that I've read people have tried and found success with are not consistent and none of them have worked for me.
I'm just guessing but in my opinion, the most likely reason for this is that something has gone horribly wrong with my permissions. I'm just not sure how to fix that, assuming my permissions are even the problem. And since everything was fine until I upgraded to Maverick, my best guess is that it happened during my last system update. It would explain why sometimes the fixes people are trying work and sometimes they don't. Maybe the update changed different settings for my Mac than the people who've fixed their issue had. I'd love to know if anyone else noticed that the problem started right after a system update, particularly since it's also happening to people who are using older OS versions before Maverick.
But more than that, what I REALLY want to know is how to fix this. I don't want to keep randomly trying stuff. I need a good, clean fix. Since none of the Apple experts here seem to have any idea as to even why this is happening, much less how to solve the problem, I can only conclude that THIS HAS TO BE A BUG and the only fix is yet another system update that patches whatever is making this lock thing happen. Could it be an installer issue that's fouling things up? Could it be a problem with the App Store's delivery of the updates? I sure hope somebody finds a solution real soon, because while I can't unlock my prefs, at least they're locked. I really feel bad for the people who can't lock theirs. I really believe that the two problems are related.
CAN ANYBODY TELL ME WITH ANY CERTAINTY HOW TO FIX THIS AND WHAT TO DO TO KEEP IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN?!!!
(sorry for all the caps )

Answer 1

Hi Mac Warrior,
I have the same issue. Just after a restart, everything works but after few minutes, the issue comes back.
Moreover, when I try to switch to another user account, a white screen appears without the possibility to do anything else than using the power button to shut it off.
I hope a fix will come faster.
Not sure that will help but I have error logs when I open User preferences :
31/10/2013 09:14:56,897 System Preferences[4094]: Preference bundle "/Library/PreferencePanes/HyperDock.prefpane" is missing identifier
31/10/2013 09:14:57,198 com.apple.preferences.users.remoteservice[4098]: assertion failed: 13A603: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [FCBF0A02-0B06-3F97-9248-5062A9DEB32C]: 0x25
31/10/2013 09:14:57,224 com.apple.preferences.users.remoteservice[4098]: assertion failed: 13A603: liblaunch.dylib + 25164 [FCBF0A02-0B06-3F97-9248-5062A9DEB32C]: 0x25
31/10/2013 09:14:57,655 com.apple.preferences.users.remoteservice[4098]: Bogus event received by listener connection:
<error: 0x7fff72b19b50> { count = 1, contents =
          "XPCErrorDescription" => <string: 0x7fff72b19e60> { length = 18, contents = "Connection invalid" }