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Well! My cousin writes,
I have two:
com.apple.systempreferences.0017f2c7baa5.plist
com.apple.systempreferences.000d93b6e608.plist
Remind me what I am to do with one or both of these – just move it/ them to Trash?
Then Restart?
What do you think, Doc? Having those two prefs with weird names seems anomalous. Get rid of both of them?
/Mr Lynn
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> What do you think, Doc?
The weird strings in the names are supposed to be MAC addresses on pre-Leopard Macs and some portion of a UUID under Leopard and higher. They mark those pref files as specific to that Mac.
I'm not sure why you've only got the plist files in ByHost, but yes, deleting those files might solve the problem.
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Well, he put both plist files in the Trash and restarted, but that did not solve the problem. Shouldn't be necessary to empty the Trash, should it? I advised against it, until sure he wouldn't want the files back, but that's a precaution going back to pre-OS X.
Other options? Reinstall the OS? Or get a third-party utility like Cocktail?
/Mr Lynn
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See if the System Pref's will open when he's logged in under a different user account.
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Doc wrote:
See if the System Pref's will open when he's logged in under a different user account.
There is another user account, but he can't remember the password. And he can't get into System Prefs to create a new one!
Catch-22.
/Mr Lynn
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He can reset the password on the second user account using the Reset Password Utility available in the Utilities menu when he boots from the Tiger install disc.
Make sure that he's careful not to reset the password on his regular user account since the login password is tied to the Keychain password.
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Well, he managed to remember his password, thanks to the hints that the Mac offers.
So he got in under the different user name (actually his own; the other is his wife's), and writes,
The good news is that the screen backdrop for my account is the good old standby that comes with a new Mac. Those ugly photos I downloaded are no where to be seen under my account.
The bad news is that System Preferences still does not open even with me using my account.
So I suggested he go into the Library under his account and delete the systempreferences.plist file(s) there, too. He responds:
Logged in as me, I got to Users/_____ and opened Library.
There were no files called com.apple.systempreferences.----.plist (with or without anything filled in the blanks)
I looked also in a file called Preferences and there were none.
In the Preferences file I also looked in the file called ByHost and there were none.
So once again I am at a loss for suggestions. Reinstall the OS?
/Mr Lynn
