Problems saving system preference settings

Hi All
I have just bought a new intel Mac and upgraded it to Mac OS 10.7 Lion. Everything works great except for one small anoying problem. When I go to system preferences and set my sound output option to my external speakers all is ok untill I restart the machine. Now the setting is not saved and I have to redo it manually each time. All my other settings save ok. I have tried reparing permissions and reparing the start up volume with password utility as mentioned online. I have also deleted and redone my system prefrences plist file in the system folder. Does anyone out there know what is going on and how to fix it.
Thanks for your help.
Regards
Paul

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.
First, empty the Trash.
Triple-click the line below to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
find ~ $TMPDIR.. $ -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl $ 2> /dev/null | wc -l
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
The output of this command, on a line directly below what you entered, will be a number such as "41." Please post it in a reply.

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If you can find the attribute you're looking for, then that may help you narrow down which version of a .plist file to restore, though not all of them are straightforward legible text. Some have bizarre strings of seemingly random characters that only the application can interpret.
Message was edited by: Topher Kessler

System Preferences settings reset on reboot.

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Hello afloc,
You will have to reset your System Preferences to do this but it might help.
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1. Open Disk Utility and repair permissions
2. Open Finder, press Option key, select Go > Library, open Preferences folder and delete com.apple.systempreferences.plist
3. Go to System Preferences > Users and Groups, create an user and check if the issue appears
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Your condition of backing up without an external disk is unrealistic and can't be done. A backup to an external is required.
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Ferd ll,
I had the same phenomenon: an outsized lightswitch suddenly replacing the 'sharing' icon in system prefs.
I saw a post recommending trashing just the last of the three files you suggest, and it worked (com.apple.preferencepanes.cache).
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Make sure the systemprefs plist file is not locked. If it is, unlock it. If it isn't, delete it then restart.
To find the file
1. Make Finder active. Choose 'Go' from the menu bar, hold down the option key.
2. Choose Library (you must have the 'option' key held down).
3. Go to Preferences > com.apple.systemprefereces.plist
4. Right-click (or hit 'cmd-i' on the keyboard) and choose 'Get Info'. If the 'Locked' option is ticked, untick it. Then Restart. If the 'Locked' option is not ticked, close the dialogue, remove the file to trash. Restart.
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While you can't currently change your Apple ID to a Mobile/iCloud email address, I found a solution that helps with a related problem.
Suppose you've recently got an iCloud email address, but Apple are still sending all your iTunes Store, App Store and Mac App Store receipts to your old gmail address (the one that's still your Apple ID). And suppose they're also sending all the Apple Support Communities notifcation emails to your old gmail address. How do you change it? How do you fix it?
Well the option exists, but it is hidden away in a weird place. To get Apple sending all of their receipts and notifications to your new iCloud email address...
• Go to your country's Apple Store website http://store.apple.com/
• Click on the Account button in the top-right corner
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All system preferences / settings lost after restore

Maybe I'm missing the point, but I had to run a restore last night after a hanging software update. Basically what happened was I was running normal software update (tryna get that iPhone os update), and it got hung up installing something. I was forced to restart, and the machine would not restart...
So after going thru the requisite repair disk permissions and AppleJack to find my startup disk was not corrupted and still in fact had data on it (yet still couldn't restart) I just reverted my system to a pre-backup version via Time Machine, a backup that had occured just hours prior.
While I did not lose any data, I did lose:
- my default itunes library was reset (i keep my music on a separate internal disk, I had to manually add all my music into the library)
- extensions / bookmarks / settings / saved passwords in Firefox, Coda, FTP programs, etc
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is just how time machine works? i'm glad i didn't lose any data, but it's a real pain to set everything up the way i had it before...
any insight would be rad!

Colin Bayer wrote:
* I got home at ~8:30 PM to a screen that still said "Copying ..." some 100,000 files and no progress all day. Finder was frozen, couldn't do anything. had to hard restart
That sounds like corruption on your backups, but given what happened next, I don't think so:
* now i'm getting the "no" symbol upon startup. great, that means it can't find os X on my startup disk. it goes to the next available startup disk, which happens to be another internal drive with windows XP on it.
That wouldn't be caused by the problem restoring Application Support.
* i boot from the install disk again. run disk repair. install disk doesn't even show a formatted / S.M.A.R.T. verified disk in HD Bay 1. somehow hard restarting just totally ruined my startup disk...damnit.
* i can't even start in single user mode.
* try to erase and/or re-partition the startup disk from the Disk Utility on the CD, and can't do that either. it gives me some resource busy error. this appears to be a Leopard bug and fortunately I can reformat from the snow leopard install disk.
I'm very suspicious of your internal HD. Try this: Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test
so, i'm left with reinstalling os 10.5.x via install disk on my now erased / reformatted hard drive. after that, i'm going to try to (again) restore from the time machine disk (thank god all of my media and time machine backups are on separate hard disks...). Will a time machine restore into a freshly installed OS from a previous install?
Depends. A full restore, where you start from your Install disc, will erase the drive and restore everything, including OSX.
If you do an +Erase and Install+ of Leopard, then use +Setup Assistant+ (see #19 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), it will bring over everything you select except OSX. Then download and instal the "combo" update to get back to 10.5.8. http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_8_ComboUpdate Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.

I have lost the system preferences settings icon and want to reinstall my os to orig settings unfortunately I have lost thrown out disc due to moving house, can i get a copy of hardware drivers as can buy os disc

Can anybody help I have no problems duyinng new os system,
but unable to find which hardware and drivers required for system to work

All hardware drivers are included with the Operating System, OS X.
You will need the Original system discs to Reinstall the OS clean. You can get them from Apple for a fee. So call Apple and have the serial # of your Mac and order the Replacement System Discs. And this time try not to lose or throw them away.

Problems saving system preference settings

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