Symptom
1. Any Mac Help link that would normally open a System Preferences pane, for example "Open Login preferences for me," does not work. This only affect users created prior to updating to Mac OS X 10.1.
2. Preference panes do not open from Menu bar items.
Examples of Menu bar items that open panes in System Preferences:
Solution
This issue occurs when the preferences bundles are no longer associated with System Preferences. To resolve this issue, re-associate the preferences bundles with the correct application. Follow these steps:
System Preferences should now open to the appropriate pane when selected from menu items.
1. Any Mac Help link that would normally open a System Preferences pane, for example "Open Login preferences for me," does not work. This only affect users created prior to updating to Mac OS X 10.1.
2. Preference panes do not open from Menu bar items.
Examples of Menu bar items that open panes in System Preferences:
- You choose Open Date & Time after clicking the clock in the menu bar.
- You choose Open Energy Saver from the battery menu bar item (available on portable computers).
Solution
This issue occurs when the preferences bundles are no longer associated with System Preferences. To resolve this issue, re-associate the preferences bundles with the correct application. Follow these steps:
- 1. Choose Go to Folder from the Go menu.
2. Type: /System/Library/PreferencePanes/
3. Click Go.
4. Select one of the Preferences (it does not matter which one).
5. Choose Show Info from the File menu.
6. Choose Open with application from the pop-up menu.
7. Click the application selection menu, which is located immediately below and to the left of the menu you just set to "Open with application."
8. Choose Other from the menu (Figure 1).
Figure 1 The Info window
9. In the navigation dialog that appears, choose All Applications from the Show pop-up menu.
10. Use the navigation dialog to locate the Applications folder in your Mac OS X disk. From this folder, select the System Preferences application.
11. Click Add. An alert box with this message appears: "You don't have privileges to change the application for this document only. Do you want to change all similar documents to open with the application 'System Preferences'?"
12. Click Continue.
13. The Info window should now show System Preferences 2.0 as the application used to open preferences (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Choosing System Preferences in the Info window
14. Close the Info window.
System Preferences should now open to the appropriate pane when selected from menu items.