Can't open Finder-Preferences

hey!

since a couple of hours I cannot open the preferences of the finder. I've already deleted the com.apple.finder.plist but that did not solve the problem.

what could cause this problem OR how could it be solved?

greets, simon

(sry for the english, trying my very best )

did you restart finder or log out and back in after removing the plist file?

I once accidentally edited my com.apple.loginwindow.plist, and I couldn't start my computer off the hard disk. I had to re-install my OS (10.5.2) and since then I updated back to 10.5.6, and everything has been running fine. But my point is, you should not edit the system files that are important to your computer running, like those plist files. Maybe you were pressing the wrong hotkey? or did you go up to the menu and select "Preferences"?

@bobtomay: yes i performed a restart after removing this plist. as i saw it doesn't work i put the plist back to where it has been before.

@leopard-user 1: i went to preferences by selecting preferences in menu. i didn't edited the plist, just removed it from the original location but didn't want to delete it like it's explained here to delete my preferences -Finder issues? How to delete its preferences

sounds like you may have to try removing the systempreferences.plist. It's in the same place, but you'll have to reset all of your system preferences again if this one works. Do it the same way, don't delete it until after you find out if it works or not.

Have you run monolingual or xslimmer or some similar program on your Mac recently? If so, before you try the above, I would go back into that program and restore everything. Assuming you had it backup everything rather than just delete.

Nope - thanks anyway

i moved the com.apple.systempreferences.plist to my desk and logged off and in again - but nothing seems to have changed - that's not correct isn't it? i did not have to reset any of my preferences ... what went wrong

I'm out of ideas that I would suggest on someone else's computer - have never had an apps Preferences that would not open.

If it didn't work, I still would move that preference file back where it came from.

yep did that already - anyway thank you

hope i don't have to reinstall the OS again ... oooor could the problem be caused by tools like candybar? but candybar is installed a few weeks now an the preferences-problem exists since yesterday ... couldn't be possible

Too many folks using Candybar and first I've seen this issue.

It's not the way I try to fix problems, however, the 'archive and install' option probably would only take about 30 minutes and would keep all your existing stuff when choosing to preserve .... read that section in the link.

Might wait and see if anyone else has an idea.

no one else?