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Help, Accident, How to restore plist file?

cmF

cmF

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 19, 2008
77
1
California
So I tried to change the login screen background on my macbook using this mini tutorial. I tried using this method
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture "/Path/to/picture/you/want/to/use/image.jpg"
Click to expand...
but I must have entered the image path wrong and now I just get a blank blue login screen background and I dont know how to change it. I'm pretty sure the only file i changed is com.apple.loginwindow.plist

How do I restore it to factory settings? Thanks!
 
try

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture "/System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg"

Edit: if that works, you could just go into the System/Library/CoreServices directory, copy the DefaultDesktop.jpg file to somewhere else, removie it, put your own image in there and rename it "DefaultDesktop.jpg" (this is what you are doing if you follow method #1 in your link). That way is probably better, as who knows what will happen if the file you modify your plist to use as the desktop ever changes location.
 
It didn't work :mad:

I opened the file up in dreamweaver and this is what it reads

plist.png

can I just use the same plist file my girlfriend has on her macbook? there were no changes made to hers.
her_plist.png


If not,
Is there anyway to revert the com.apple.loginwindow.plist somehow?
 
cmF said:
can I just use the same plist file my girlfriend has on her macbook? there were no changes made to hers.

If not,
Is there anyway to revert the com.apple.loginwindow.plist somehow?
Click to expand...

That'd probably work. You could also try

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture "/System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg"

(by the way I just noticed I didn't include the quotes in my earlier post- did you try it with the quotes? Sorry about that.)
 
Nothing is working!!!

I think I really just need to revert back to a fresh com.apple.loginwindow.plist file.

But how?!?!
 
Nevermind, I figured it out. I deleted the com.apple.loginwindow.plist
 file to get a fresh copy.

It would have pointed to this: "/System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg" BUT I totally forgot I renamed the jpg file using this code I got from the tutorial.
cd /System/Library/CoreServices
sudo mv DefaultDesktop.jpg DefaultDesktop_org.jpg
Click to expand...
so I changed it back
cd /System/Library/CoreServices
sudo mv DefaultDesktop_org.jpg DefaultDesktop.jpg
Click to expand...

Then it pointed back to the original image, then, like you said, I overwrote that with the jpg I really wanted to use. Thanks for the help miles
 
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