System Preferences not available?

I can't access System Preferences anymore -- wanted to change my screensaver, and when I click on System Preferences I get an error message that says "You can't open the application System Preferences because it is not supported on this type of Mac" huh? That doesn't make sense? How do I change my screensaver?

This is a 21.5 inch iMac, and I know I changed the screensaver about a year ago. I'm running on Mac OS X 10.6.8 and keep updating. I installed iCloud so I could more easily sync between iPad2 and the iMac, but now I'm wondering if that is what caused this mess?

Just had the iMac at the Genius Bar as Tech Tool Deluxe gave me nasty reports on the drive...and they cleared it and fixed some directory issues, but maybe not all of them?

Have you tried repair disk permissions ?
Application Folder > Utilities > Disk Utility > select Mcintosh HD and select repair disk permissions.

Doesn't seem to have made a difference.

You might try two things:
1) Download and run Onyx (a free download) to see if it finds anything
2) If that doesn't help, boot from your OS disk and do an OS reinstall (w/o erasing)--make sure you have a current backup first just in case

EDIT: Before you do that you might try a PRAM and SMC reset. Don't know that it will help, but sometimes will fix problems that have no readily apparent source

I reinstalled from the disc and it seems to have solved the problem. However, I am loathe to update to 10.6.8 as that may have caused the problems I had. Maybe later this weekend...

DSWoodard said:

I reinstalled from the disc and it seems to have solved the problem. However, I am loathe to update to 10.6.8 as that may have caused the problems I had. Maybe later this weekend...

Click to expand...

It should not and the advantages would be worth it and as things point to
the App Store which is only on 10.6.8 and 10.7 and above you might find yourself locked out of something down the road.

I did the update, and have NOT recreated the problem, so it looks like everything is back to normal.