System Preferences Display Oddity, Workaround

Mark Sealey reports an odd problem with the System Preferences pane in Mac OS X 10.2.1, which seems to cause these display problems:

• "no 'Accounts' pane at all; it should be the first in the 'System' row
• two 'Internet' panes; one in 'Network' and one in 'Other'
• the System Preferences window (ie the one for 'Show All') opens and (randomly) immediately resizes itself with scroll bars. Since there is no resize window button for this window and the window is clearly designed always to be at full size and without scrollbars, something is wrong.

Workaround The following workaround eliminated the problem on Sealey's configuration:

"All three symptoms disappear by first quitting System Preferences - that is, make sure it is not active in the Dock; and not just that this 'Show all' window is closed. This is important. Then trash the file: com.apple.preferencepanes.cache in ~/Library/Caches On relaunching System Preferences, all should be well; this may apply to other System Preference pane odd behavior too."

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