System Preferences Settings return to another setting after restart

To all Mac,
Just wondering if everybody having the same issue as me?
Example 1:
Under Sytem Preferences --> Keybaord --> Setting set to "All Controls" it works fine until I restart my Mac or Log Off then IN.
It happend to me under Keyboard and Language & Text Preference Only
Is getting quite irritating now.
I have realize that it only happen to my Mac with FileVault Turn On.
On my other MacBook with FileVault Turn Off it does not have the above issues.
Currently Running on Mac OS X Montain Lion 10.8.4
Under a MacBook Pro Core i5
Just wonder if there anybody out there with the same issue as me or have a solution.
Thanks!
I'm a Mac

Close all windows and quit all applications.
Hold the option key down and click the "Go" menu in the Finder menubar.
Select "Library" from the dropdown, then "Preferences" folder.
Look for this file.
com.apple.systempreferences.plist
Right click the file and select " Move To Trash" from the contextual menu.
Restart the computer.

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None of the changes I make to system preference or the dock will hold after restart. I've cleared the RAM, run disk repair and reinstalled the OS. Now what?

None of the changes I make to system preference or the dock will hold after restart. I've cleared the RAM, run disk repair and reinstalled the OS. Now what?

MobileMe closed on July 31, 2012.
It is true that the only way to sync your Mac with iCloud is to upgrad. You need to be running OS X Lion 10.7.2 or higher in order to sync your Mac with iCloud. At this point, you can upgrade directly to OS X Mountain Lion from the version of OS X you are now running (10.6.8). You can purchase and download the Mountain Lion upgrade from the Mac App Store for $19.99. After upgrading you will see iCloud in System Preferences. This guide explains how to sync your Mac with iCloud after upgrading: http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/mac.html.
Once all your devices are signed into the same iCloud account and you have turned on your iCloud data syncing, you will be able to keep them all in sync using iCloud. You will still have to sync with iTunes to manage your iTunes media such as music, movies, podcasts, etc. You will have the option to either continue backing up automatically with your computer when you sync with iTunes, or to back up your iOS devices automatically to iCloud every 24 hours (as long as they are connected to wifi and your chargers).

Is it possible to save System preference settings for every user that logins to a Mac OS X?

I work at a school and we have iMacs running Mavericks 10.9 in our environment. We have them binded to our Windows domain so that way students can use their own login to access the Macs. I have a number of System preference settings that I would like to take a effect, but I only see that these settings take effect for every user. So even if I login as the Main administrator account and set settings in System Preferences, such as not allowing the Wifi symbol to show, the next user that logins will still see the wifi symbol because the setting isn't taking effect for their System preferences. Does anyone know a way to get System Preference settings to take affect for every user that logins? Maybe a script?

Modifying the user template is not supported. You can Google for people who have done it in the past. I would recommend going to official route, if possible. Here are a couple of training documents. I'm sure there is more available though more official channels.
http://training.apple.com/pdf/wp_osx_configuration_profiles_ml.pdf
https://www.apple.com/education/docs/l521219b_osx_deployment_guide_030513.pdf
http://training.apple.com/pdf/wp_integrating_active_directory_mav.pdf

How to Check System Preference Settings with Time Machine

I just found and fixed a problem caused by a bad System Preference/Universal Access
setting and would like to go back in my Time Machine backup to see where the
error was made. I may have been too quick to blame the 10.5.3 update on the
problem so wanted to look back in time.
The problem is i don't know how to check System Preferences using the Time Machine.
Any suggestion?

If you're looking for specific settings, the short answer is you cannot. You can open the .plist files and try to find the specific option you're looking for, though it might not be too easy to decipher some of the contents of the .plist file. For the most part they're just lists of attributes and settings. For instance, here's a very small chunk of my Finder .plist file:
<key>All Images.cannedSearch</key>
<dict>
     <key>SidebarWidth</key>
     <integer>162</integer>
     <key>ToolbarVisible</key>
     <true/>
     <key>ViewHeight</key>
     <integer>1116</integer>
     <key>ViewStyle</key>
     <string>icnv</string>
     <key>WindowBounds</key>
     <dict>
          <key>bottom</key>
          <integer>1200</integer>
          <key>left</key>
          <integer>56</integer>
          <key>right</key>
          <integer>1920</integer>
          <key>top</key>
          <integer>84</integer>
     </dict>
</dict>
<key>AnimateInfoPanes</key>
<true/>
<key>AnimateSnapToGrid</key>
<string>true</string>
<key>AnimateWindowZoom</key>
<true/>
Each "key" is followed by an attribute, so for instance the "SideBar Width" key is given the "Width" integer attribute of 162. However, some keys have multiple entries, such as the "WindowBounds" key having sub-keys of "bottom", "left", "right", and "top".
These values are finder preferences, though are not accessible via the finder's preference settings. However, buried deep in the Finder's .plist file are some of the user-editable settings:
<key>ShowHardDrivesOnDesktop</key>
<true/>
<key>ShowMountedServersOnDesktop</key>
<true/>
<key>SidebarSearchesSectionDisclosedState</key>
<false/>
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

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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I have a Mac Pro that keeps loosing is System Preferences. I change the mouse settings and as soon as the machine is rebooted, settings go back to default. I've seen other posts similar to this but no one has had a solution.

Hello afloc,
You will have to reset your System Preferences to do this but it might help.
Locate this file: com.apple.systempreferences.plist It's here: /Home/Library/Preferences
Open the Preferences folder, locate that file, drag it to the Trash, empty the Trash and reboot.
Now try your mouse...
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error message
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I have signed out of my icloud account… and back in. Reset data in the advanced section.
Deleted many preferences.
I have run the iPhoto utilities at iPhoto startup
I have run the keychain utility.
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Go to the System/iCloud preference pane on your Mac and make sure all of the items you want to sync/sharte are checked:
If you can't check those boxes or you did and they didn't work, sign out of the account and then back in again.
OT

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Can't scroll up and down using 2 finger scroll ? Was changing system preferences and must have screwed them up. Is there a way to restore olld settings?

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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Hi all
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.
Where do I start so search?

Ric91 wrote:
- delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
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http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
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My System preference are resetting to base everytime I restart.

Not all, but many of my system preferences are resetting to the defaults every time I quit.
Most specifically,
1. in Keyboard I turn off all the system function key settings, then restart and they are back
2. in Sound I adjust the right left balance and it resets to center. But it does keep my output choice
3. in Mouse it keeps rechecking natural scroll.
It's almost as if I want my mac the way if was pre mountain lion but it thinks it know better.
Is there a corrupt prefferences file I can get rid of? Something I can reset?
It's driving me crazy, and I was only barely sane before this happened.
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Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.
Step 1
If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.
Triple-click the following line to select it. Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password. Nothing will be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.
Step 2 (optional)
Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.
Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.
In the Terminal window, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.

Brightness resets to highest setting after restart...

I'm a mac noob and absolutely love my 24" iMac. One thing I've noticed is that the brightness will reset to the maximum setting after a restart. I've seen other posts about the brightness reset to the lowest setting, but has anyone experienced a reset to the maximum setting? I calibrate the monitor with the Monaco Optix XR and the icc profile doesn't change, just the brightness setting.
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Hello Mike
Welcome to Discussions
If you are using a wired keyboard and some others you can use the F14 & F15 keys to adjust display brightness, try this it will save you time not having to open display preferences.
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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
- haven't checked yet, but possibly Apache / Ruby installs on my startup disk too
- Dock / desktop background / mouse configuration / network configuation etc.
It's basically like a new computer but with my old files and applications installed on it.
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.

Can a User's System Preferences be copied to another Mac?

I manage a school computer lab with about 40 Macs (iMac G3s and eMacs). All are running 10.3.9. I configured one computer how I wanted it, made an image, then restored all the others basically making clones. I created a "Student" user. In time I realized I needed to tweak some of the privileges for the student user, but I want to avoid having to go in as an admin to each computer and resetting the security settings for students. Thinking these settings must be saved somewhere, why couldn't I just copy the settings to the other computers? I tried copying the com.apple.systempreferences.plist from my admin Library/Preferences folder since this appeared when I did a Date Modified search, but that didn't do it? Any thoughts on this? Thanks.

Thanks for the tip. I'm out on medical leave for a few days, so I haven't had a chance to try it. But, please clarify: When you say the preferences, am I to understand you mean all the preferences in both the root library and the user library? Also, the users are all the same (Student), so there shouldn't be any account differences, but thanks for the reminder.

My "Sort" settings do not stay set after I leave bookmarks.

When I go to bookmarks and then click on "Organize Bookmarks", I go to "Sort" and then select a particular setting like "Sort by Name." From the bookmark menu, I select a specific folder. Then I go to the left top middle icon with 4 horizontal lines, click on it and press "Sort by Name' and see all the folder name go into alphabetical order. However, when I close bookmarks it reverts to the "Unsorted" mode.

The Views menu in the Bookmarks Manager (Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks) is for displaying the bookmarks in different sorting orders (hence the name Views) and doesn't sort bookmarks permanently.
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System Preferences Settings return to another setting after restart

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