[mdickinson]

Hello,

So, I'm installing something or running something, or something, and it says that it needs to update something, so I click the 'ok, do it' button. I don't remember what the program was, but apparently it didn't work right. Anyway, it did manage to mess up my icons or whatever in sysprefs.

[removed oversize image --tooki]

Any thoughts? How do I fix this? 10.4.7, if it matters.

I'm guessing that the problem is with /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Speech.prefPane. How would I go about getting a 'stock' version of that again? Can I just copy in a new Contents/Resources/Speech.icns? Looks like that's the problem, but I've only been using OS X for about a week now, so a lot of this is still 'magic' to me.

Thanks for any help.

[steve626]

You probably simply have a cache file that needs to be replaced, not the preference pane itself.

If you look in your home directory, in the Library/Caches folder, you will find a file called

com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

It might be in a slightly different location for 10.4.7, the above location is where it is for 10.3.9.

Close the System Preferences program. Then delete this file and empty the trash. Then reopen your System Preferences. See if the problem is fixed.

[mdickinson]

You were right. That did it. Thanks for the help!

[tooki]

This has proven to be a common occurrence in 10.4.7, and has been discussed in numerous threads over the past few months.

tooki

[tooki]

I just made this thread sticky, since this question is getting asked every couple of weeks now.

tooki

[samsontan]

com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

may i know wat's this file for? why do we have to delete it to repair the icon?

[kick52]

Originally Posted by samsontan 

com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

may i know wat's this file for? why do we have to delete it to repair the icon?

probably because it is saying 'use this icon for that prefpane' or something, but then got corrupted, and started saying something else.

something along those lines.

[Stelex]

I guess this is the problem Strange icon in System Preferences and how to fix it.

[P]

Apple and all its caches...

The filesystem used on Macs by default, HFS+, is generally decent but has a number of flaws because of its history. One of the effects is that it doesn't thread very well, and opening lots of files in a row is slow work. To avoid this, Apple likes to create caches - like this one and the one used by Safari for its icon cache. They sometimes get corrupted. The apps don't seem to notice this, and so you get flaws like this one. Trashing the cache forces the app to reload all those files and rebuild the cache.

One would hope that Apple could figure this out and add some sanity checking to its cache loading, and just reload from the raw files whenever it detects that the file is corrupt, but so far this hasn't happened.

[pendragon]

Posted error, sorry.

[Cold Warrior]

I'm going to de-sticky this for now, and we'll see how it settles.