System Preferences freezes when trying to change background

Hi,
Every time I try to change my background, system preferences freezes and I have to manually quit.
Can somebody tell me how to solve this?
Thanks.

You are probably running 10.4.10 in as much as the MacBook pro's came out well after 10.4.1 was released. In any case try deleting the file com.apple.systempreferences.plist in your user/library/preferences folder.

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System preferences freezes when trying to change the date

Hey guys,
I've got a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.4.1. I'm having a problem with trying to change the time/date settings. Either going through the system preferences window or accessing it through clicking the clock in the top right and then 'open date & time', I get the spinning wheel and System Preferences crashes. Any ideas why?
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Phil

You are probably running 10.4.10 in as much as the MacBook pro's came out well after 10.4.1 was released. In any case try deleting the file com.apple.systempreferences.plist in your user/library/preferences folder.

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First thing to do is download Preferential Treatment and check all preference files, while logged into that problematic account. Trash any that it finds broken/corrupt. Quit the associated apps and try System Preferences again. If PT doesn't find any, then move the usual plists to the Desktop (com.apple.systempreferences.plist amd com.apple.NetworkUtility/plist in ~/Library/Preferences/, including any such as com.apple.systempreferences.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.plists in the ByHost folder and try System Preferences again.
If those steps don't fix things, you can either copy the ones from the new user to the corrupt user, a couple at a time, log out and back in, and see if any fix or break things. That's a slow and tedious process. Alternatively, log into the new account, reset prefs, and eventally delete the old one. There's no easy way except to routinely make a bootable backup/clone and when you experience these kinds of problems again, restore it, and move on.

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On a MacBook Pro 13 (Mid 2012, 2.5 i5, 4GB) running 10.7.5 I can no longer change the desktop background. When I start the system preferences and select desktop and screensaver the ui loads and shows "loading pictures". After that the system preferences dialog freezes and can only be closed with a kill on activity monitor.
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Ric91 wrote:
- delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
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Could you tell me what you meant by 'deleted system preference'? Thank you.

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Login to the problematic account ensure that System Preferences is closed down. Move the following file to trash:
<home>/Library/Caches/com.apple.preferencepanes.cache
but don't delete it from the trash yet, just in case you need to restore it. Re-open System Preferences, it will re-create the file. If all's well then, then you can empty the trash.

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Quit System Preferences if it's running. In the Finder, hold down the option key and select
Go ▹ Library
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Caches/com.apple.systempreferences
and move the following item to the Desktop:
Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
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No guarantees, what you might like to try the following:
1. Sign out of your account
(If you are unable to do this because System Preferences has frozen, Force Quit System Preferences and try again)
2. When prompted, opt to delete, contacts, calendars etc from your Mac.
(You are only deleting this data from your Mac, not from iCloud, the data will be reinstated when you log back in. If you need to check that the data is in iCloud before deleting it go to iCloud.com and check each section for data)
3. Having logged out, check that the iCloud accounts along with their data have disappeared from the Mail, Address Book and iCal Applications.
(If necessary, delete the iCloud accounts from each of these application separately from each Applications Preferences)
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5. Open your User Library folder in the Finder. (When in the Finder, go to the Go menu, hold down the option key (alt) and choose Library when it appears in the Go menu)
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7. Select the iCloud folder again in Library > Application Support and drag it to the trash, enter your administrators password when prompted.
8. Restart your computer.
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Confirmed bug in Aperture on 10.5.1 - adding an iphoto library solves the issue in case anybody hits this post and suffers the same malady.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5847357&#5847357

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Hi
I've tried to change the background picture under system preferences - desktop/screensavers. When I tried to select a picture from my iphoto-folders the system hung and won't come back at all until I shot it down with the on/off button. I wasn't even able to do a forced quit...
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Running 10.5.1 on my MacBook Pro without a hitch until today. Installed Aperture 1.5 and updated it to 1.5.6 last night and it too works fine.
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Now I only observed one occurrence of the Aperture Projects Folder in the System Preferences applet. However, when I went to add my newly renamed personal images folder the second occurrence of the Aperture Projects folder appeared and would not let me access anything therein.
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it is a bug in leopard that we have uncovered ...
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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5847357&#5847357

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System Preferences freezes when trying to change background

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