System preference resets on restart

I have set up keyboard shortcuts so that when I hit F12, it shows all windows and when I hit Apple+F12, it shows my dashboard. But when I have to restart (because my sounds stop working, which is another issue altogether), those two shortcuts swap back. what do I need to do to fix this?
Nathan

Back up all data. Quit System Preferences if it's running.
Triple-click the line below on this page to select it, then copy the text to the Clipboard (command-C):
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return. A folder should open. If it does, look for a file with a long name that begins "com.apple.screensaver". There may be two such files. Move the onewithout the word "slideshow" in the name to the Trash.
Test. If the problem is resolved. recreate your settings in the Screen Saver tab.

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Keyboard system preferences resetting after restart

Greetings,
I began with 2 similar problems. My menu bar and keyboard system preferences would reset after each startup. I fixed the former with https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6028346?tstart=0
Still, every time I restart or logout my keyboard system preferences reset to the default. These defaults interfere with the software I run- Logic & Pro Tools, so while not the worst thing to have to remember to reset them each time, it is a drag.
Any help will be appreciated
Thanks

The procedure below will reset the permissions of a user's home folder in OS X 10.7.4 or later, including 10.8 or later. If you're running an earlier version of 10.7, update to the latest version first. This procedure should not be used under OS X versions older than 10.7.4.
Back up all data before you begin.
Step 1
Click the Finder icon in the Dock. A Finder window will open.
Step 2
Press the following key combinations, in the order given:
Command-3
Shift-command-H
Command-I (the letter "I" as in "Info.")
The Info window of your home folder will open.
Step 3
Click the lock icon in the lower right corner and authenticate with the name and login password of an administrator on the system. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Step 4
In the Sharing & Permissions section of the window, verify that you have "Read & Write" privileges. If not, use the "+" and "-" buttons in the lower left corner to make the necessary changes.
Step 5
By default, the groups "staff" and "everyone" have "Read Only" privileges. With those settings, the files at the top level of your home folder will be readable by other local users. You can change the privileges to "No Access" if you wish, but then your Public and Drop Box folders will be inaccessible to others. Most likely, you don't need to change these settings.
Step 6
If there are entries in the Sharing & Permissions list for users or groups other than "me," "staff," and "everyone," delete them.
Step 7
Click the gear icon at the bottom of the Info window and select Apply to enclosed items... from the drop-down menu. Confirm. The operation may take several minutes to complete. When it does, close the Info window.

My system preference, powner off, restart disappeared after installing lion twice! Anybody can help?

After installing Lion on my Imac, the System Preference option in the apple menu (Apple sign on top left side of desktop) has disappeared. In addition, the power off, restart options are gone too. I have reinstalled the Lion twice but the problem hasn't been resolved yet. This is happening when I am logged into adm. user. In other users account, the menu seems to be ok. Any suggestions or recommendation to help me fix this issue?

Let me clarify the issue again:
A number of items have gone missing from my apple menu: Software Update, System Preference, Dock, Recent, Restart, and Shut Down are gone.
All that's left are About, Location, Force Quit, Sleep, and Log Out. Can anybody help?

Dock and System Preferences Reset after Crash

Hi,
My computer restarted itself when I was opening a keynote document (there was no warning and I can't find a crash log). When it came back my dock had reset to the default settings and several of the applications I had on my dock were no longer there. In addition some of the other preferences I had (such as Expose hot corners) were reset.
I can easily enough reset these, but this is the 3rd or 4th crash in as many weeks, so I'm nervous that there's something serious going on. Though the others have not had such visible after-effects.
What might explain losing my dock and system preferences? Is there an easy way to get them back?
Also, what's the best strategy for evaluating the health of my system and health of my hard drive so I can figure out what's going on? Yesterday I ran "periodic daily monthly weekly" as well as Repair Permissions from the disk utility. (no permissions problems were found)
MacBook Black Mac OS X (10.4.8) Only one user account on machine

I had a similar problem. I used Keynote for a talk, which I finished without any problems. But the screen was blank when I later opened my laptop back up. After a forced restart, the dock preferences were in some sort of default settings. I have an older Titanium PowerBook, so it doesn't look like this issue is specific to the Mac Books
I have run out of ideas after doing a number of things to try to track down all the issues. Here are some more specifics of the problem:
When I log out, and log back in, the dock settings always revert to a default setting (no need to restart the computer).
The dock settings for other users on the same computer work just fine.
When I remove the dock settings from the ~/Library/Preferences folder and log out/in, the problem still persists.
If I save a copy of a working dock settings file, I can log out/in, drop the working file into the Preferences folder, then use Activity Monitor to quit the Dock, and when it restarts it will use the correct settings.
I have removed the whole Preferences folder, then logged out/in, but the problem continues to exist.

Setting in System Preferences resets itself?

This is odd. I happened to stumble across this while trying to figure out why my iMac would not auto sleep (solved). I have come to notice that any time I restart or shut down when I go into the Energy Saver settings in System Preferences, the padlock in the lower left corner is unlocked. At first I thought I had just forgotten to lock it last time, but I was sure I hadn't so I checked and sure enough it unlocks every time I reboot or shut down then restart. It doesn't seem to be causing any other issues but I'm wondering why this is happening. Any ideas anyone?
Thanks,
Rich

Hello,Sorry but Neil is partially incorrect,in System Preferences click on Security and make sure "Require password to unlock each System Preference pane"is checked off.Once this is checked off then everything will stay locked regardless if you log in or out of your Admin. account.
Message was edited by: RMT07
Message was edited by: RMT07Sorry you are correct I read that all wrong my mistake

System Preferences Resetting with Reboot

Since I upgraded to Mavericks I have this really annoying problem that my system preferences keep resetting with every reboot I make. For example the wacom driver resets to project the tablet on both displays instead of just one and the audio adjustments are resetting as well. I tried the PRAM- and the SMC- Reset but nothing seemed to work for me. Any help is greatly appriciated

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19315189#19315189

System Preferences resetting?

Hello All,
Is anyone else experiencing an issue in Leopard where your System Preferences are resetting/aren't sticking?
On several different occasions, I've noticed that my Preferences for Little Snitch seem to change back to the default settings. I just assumed that it was a bug in the software.
Today, I noticed (by accident) that some of my .Mac preferences had been reset; all of my Sync items (Bookmarks, etc.) were unchecked (and I KNOW I set them), and +Back to My Mac+ was turned on, and I know that I never would have done that (I only have 1 Mac with Leopard installed).
I use an app called +Preferential Treatment+ to check the integrity of my System Preferences, and it appears that everything is OK; no corrupt files.
What gives? Am I going crazy???
Please help. My concern is that one of my important preferences, like Security (Firewall), will turn off, and I won't know.
Thanks!

This happens to me, if I change the ? option in the Desktop preferences or the key combos in the Expose preferences they tend to reset. The only way I can get them to stick is by editing the .plist file directly. When I do this I can see that System Preferences doesn't seem to be saving the changes I made.

System Preferences Lost upon Restart / Reboot

Hi.
I wonder if anyone is able to help me with a mildly annoying problem.
I have an issue with my 24" iMac in that when it is shut down or rebooted, upon startup some (but not all) system preferences appear to be lost.
Typically this will include:
Mouse Preferences - button 3 and 4 preferences are lost, but not button 2
Firewall - permissions for certain programs (Vuze, for example) are lost
I have googled and googled and I can't find why this might be. If anyone could suggest anything I'd be grateful.
Thanks.

I'm having the same problem. Sometimes after a system startup I notice that some of my preferences are lost and things revert back to their default values. This can affect the Dock, Finder, iTunes, Screen Saver hot corners, etc. Each time the problem occurs it seems to be a different set of preferences lost and it doesn't happen all the time. For instance, the dock might move from my preferred location at the left side of the screen to the default location at the bottom of the screen. And sometimes all the icons that I normally have in my dock disappear and the default list is shown instead.
I have this problem on a Mac Pro running 10.5.6 but it has been occurring ever since I upgraded to Leopard. However, this problem does not happen on any of the other Macs that I own.

Preferences reset upon restart

Hey all,
Been having some strange issues with Lion, or at least I think its Lion.. So here I am on my MacBook pro from 2010, reinstalling Snow Leopard and Lion afterwards. I install the updates and some programs (Plex, uTorrent, Chrome) only to realize that when I restart, some preferences completely ignored.. All programs added to the Dock are gone again, the assigned log-in items don't start up, iCloud was logged out again, mail settings were reset..
I reinstalled the whole thing, except for Lion, and it all worked fine. So anyway, I thought it was the laptop. Some sort of hardware problem or something, right? So I just got this new Mac mini, with Lion, and it does the same exact thing.
It doesn't remember some changes I made. I tried to repair permissions, but it doesn't do anything. Can anyone help me with this? Does anyone have seen the same problem?

Hi, I have only a tiny sub-set of these issues. But it started after I installed Lion. My issue is simply the auto-shutdown feature. I try to have this i-Mac shut down every day at 11 PM and restart at 6 AM. It worked perfectly with Snow Leopard. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. Some days I'll check on it early in the morning and it'll show the message that "This computer is shutting down X seconds". Today at 5 AM it was simply running with no messages, and probably had been running all night. I'd really like to get this feature to work. I've searched these boards and tried all the suggestions to no avail.

System preferences reset each login

Hi,
(iMac 2009) Just installed Mountain Lion, full refomat, set up a new admin account, then used migration assistant from a dmg backup to move everything.
Everything restored - apps, users, etc - all usable.
I want to use the account that was previously my admin account as my "normal" account as that is the one with all the mail, music, etc.
Logging in with the account is all good. I start changing things to my liking - change my desktop picture to something pretty, remove the question mark apps from the Dock, remove the "natural" scrolling for the mouse, etc - everything good while in that session.
I logout and then log back in as the same user - everything is reset back - question marks back, old ugly desktop picture, natural mouse scrolling, etc.
First clue is each time I login, I'm prompted with "Apple ID needed" and asked about iCloud connection. Again.
Logging in with the newly created admin user does not cause this problem and date/time and other parameters are all ok.
Maybe it is something with permissions, perhaps because the account is the "old" admin account from Snow Leopard? I'm not getting any errors that I can see.
I thought it was my problem when running the update/migration the first time, so I reformatted, reinstalled and re-migrated to the same result.
Any thoughts or suggestions? I'm tearing my hair out here (and I don't have much left!).
Cheers
Tim

Further on this, the latest login today resulted in the mouse scroll setting being retained but not anything else.
Also I didn't get the Apple ID prompt.
Not sure what this means.
Cheers
Tim

Preferences resetting themselves?

Not sure if it is just my machine, but after I installed snow leopard (before update) I noticed that some of my system settings just "reset" themselves. Desktop picture changed, Spaces settings just disappeared, printer settings and trackpad settings have lost their settings. Anyone else experincing these kinds of weird things?

Yep, as I posted the other day. My preferences reset themselves. Don't know what it is. Didn't have that problem before installing Snow Leopard. Also, any preference pane I've added say that System Preferences has to restart in order for the preference to run. Saw somewhere this had to do with some 64 bit thing. Also, I have issues with QuickTime. Some movies won't start when I double click them, but will do fine when I open them from the Quicktime pulldown menu. AND printing is all messed up. Apple still has lots of issues with this OS version which need to get fixed ASAP. 10.6.1 was a start.

System Preferences quits all the time

Hi,
Just upraded my mid-2010 27" iMac to Lion (after carefully uninstalling the few PowerPC apps I had on SnowLeopard and all the apps which are said to be not working on http://roaringapps.com/apps:table).
Each time I open System Preferences, it quits unexpectedly.
I repaired the permissions with Disk Utiliy, rebooted the machine after shutting it down but no success.
I also runned Software Updates of course.
Any suggestions?
Note 1: what's more, some features are not working: four-finger swipe to navigate to one desktop to another (nothing happens), impossible to select a different desktop screen in System Preferences (since it quits on clicking a different Apple image).
Note 2: I got a MBA which ships with Lion installed and I have none of these problems.

Check Console right after System Preferences goes south to see if it has mentioned any third party software at the time the problem occurred. If so, update it to a Lion version or use its uninstaller to remove it.
If that doesn't help hold down the option key while selecting the Go menu in the finder and select Library (your user library). Move com.apple.desktop.plist in the Preferences folder to the trash. Restart.
You can also try the same procedure with going to your user library and moving com.apple.systempreferences.plist in the Preferences folder to the trash and restarting. If that doesn't fix things you can move the file back to where it was to restore your System Preferences settings.
You can also try starting in safe mode to see if a login item incompatibility might be responsible. Among other things, starting in safe mode disables all login items. Hold the shift key down after your hear the startup chime. Keep holding the shift key down until you see the Apple logo and the spinning wheel.
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
Safe mode checks/repairs your disk and does some maintenance routines so it takes awhile to complete booting.This Knowledge base articles will tell what happens when starting up in safe mode and what functions it disables.
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
If System Preferences > Desktop works restart (will take longer than normal to rebuild caches that safe mode clears) and see if you still have problems. If you do go to System Preferences > Accounts > your account > Login Items. Write down what is listed and use the "-" key to delete any non-Apple items. Restart normally. Add login items one at a time between restarts until you find the culprit.
Mac OS X 10.6 Help: Eliminating incompatible login items
There is small chance that a corrupt image file could be causing the problem but you should have seen that problem surface in Snow Leopard.

Missing "sharing" option in system preferences after installing apple remote desktop client version 2.10

Hi All,
I installed a wrong version of Apple remote desktop client , 2.10 and the sharing menu under system preferences vanished. I tried to uninstall the Apple remote desktop with,
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2577
but no luck, but after restarting the macbook pro with lion 10.7.2, i see my sharing option enabled but when clicked, it says the system preference has to restart and confirming that it restarts in 32 bit mode and even after clciking the sharing option it says, "you can't open sharing preferences because it doesn't work on an intel-based mac"
. So i strongly believe the apple remote desktop is creating the issue.
Can someone help how to fix this please?
Thanks

Same problem here. I manage several remote Macs, but I have one MacBook which I can get no ARD access to (black icon). I can ping the IP, I can SSH into the MacBook, the ARD and Remote Login services are checked ON, the firewall is OFF. The ARD service is configured to allow my admin user full access - however, I get nothing. I have no trouble getting into the other Macs.
Any ideas?

System Preference items randomly unlock without my authorization

Recently I noticed that the lock at the bottom of my network and sharing preferences has been unlocking without my authorization. I normally leave the preferences locked and then if I need to make any changes I unlock it. I then lock it back up after I am finished. However, about three days ago I noticed that the lock was unlocked. I tried to lock it but it would not lock so I restarted the computer and was then able to lock it. I figured that some "gremlin" was in my machine. However, last night and this morning, I noticed that the lock was again unlocked. This time I was able to lock it without a restart.
Any takers on this issue. I just want to make sure that my computer has not been hacked remotely and that someone is not unlocking these preferences in order to execute some malicious activity on my computer.
Thanks in advance for the help.

Thomas A Reed wrote:
If someone had hacked your machine, that little lock - and those preferences, for that matter - would be of little interest or consequence. The fact that it wouldn't lock (+Why wouldn't it lock? What happened when you tried?) but worked fine after a restart suggests to me you had a glitch of some kind. Not sure what, exactly.
When I clicked on the lock it did nothing other than stay unlocked. The restart fixed that issue but as mentioned in my original post, I found the lock again unlocked on two occasions after that. However, on these two subsequent occasions, I was able to engage the lock without a restart.
Thomas A Reed wrote:
Out of curiosity, why are you concerned about those locks? The fact that they're misbehaving on your machine aside, I've always found them rather silly, personally. If someone has access to your account, they can do worse than change your settings, and there are better ways of keeping trusted-but-unreliable users (like kids) from messing up your settings (namely, not letting them use your account in the first place).
This is good to know. I wrongly assumed that these locks were an important security feature to prevent unauthorized changes to system components that would leave my system vulnerable to unauthorized use.
The first thing I will do is trash the system preferences plist and restart. That seems to be the prevailing recommendation thus far.
Thanks,
Sean

"System Preference" crashing MacBook Pro 13" (Early 2011)

My MacBook Pro 13" ( Early 2011) keep crashing system after launching "System Preference" and to restart computer I must press "Power" button only.

Hi a,
You may want to contact AppleCare or make an appointment at a "genius" bar if an Apple Store is convenient to you.

System preference resets on restart

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