Mac OSX system preferences hang

Many users must have encountered a permanent hang in Mac OSX System Preferences because searching "osx system preferences hang" on Google returns more than 300,000 results. OSX isn't so rock solid after all.

This happened while I was changing the wallpaper and probably chose iPhoto. The bouncing ball then appeared. I left it like that for about 15 minutes and had to Force Quit. Rebooting the machine didn't help. This makes the entire System Preferences inaccessible so you cannot change any setting on your machine until you resolve the wallpaper issue.

The following forum entry had a solution:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1194163

All you need to do is to delete a file in your preferences folder which will reset your desktop to the default.

To do this, you will need to open terminal and type the following:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

Then, reboot your Mac and you'll see the default wallpaper and System Preferences back to normal.

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