Under Security in System Preferences I get "Preferences Error"

Question

Under Security in System Preferences, when I click on Security I get the message "Preferences Error - Could not load Security".
This may be related to another problem I see. If I go into Accounts > Login Options, when I try to uncheck "Automatically log in", the window hangs.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Ray

Answer 1

Ray
Welcome to Apple Discussions!!
when I click on Security I get the message "Preferences Error - Could not load Security".Strange behaviour by System Preferences can often be fixed by trashing com.apple.preferencepanes.cache in Home > Library > Caches folder. But it may not help in your case, so it may help to look in your log files to find out why your preference pane is not opening.
The simplest way to look at log files is to use Console.
Open the Console application from /Applications/Utilities. It will default to showing the "console.log" and possibly the "system.log". Use the File menu if necessary to get both these logs open, and use the Broom to Clear both windows.
Now try to open the Security preference pane and see what appears in either of these windows. Copy and paste it here.
You may see a message saying "Crash report written to <pathname of crash.log>". If so, click on the "Logs" icon at the top left in the tool bar. Then, depending on the <pathname of crash.log> in your message, look under either ~/Library/Logs or /Library/Logs by clicking the disclosure triangle, then click the disclosure triangle for "CrashReporter".
Find the crash log corresponding to your message and select it. It will open at the end of the log. Look back for the last line of asterisks in the log, then post everything after that to the end of the log.