Help! Can't get screensaver to install

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha everyone,

I have a problem with installing screensavers, such as Old Glory and Think Different. Attached are a series of screenshots that I took the last time I attempted to install a screensaver. Please help me understand what is going on, and what I can do, if anything, to install the screensaver.

Mahalo Nui Loa in advance,

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[madog]

Just throwing this out there... maybe a permissions problem? Have the screen savers ever worked before? Have you tried "installing" them yourself?

You can drag it to your home/library/screen savers folder for just your user [I think the folder needs to be created if not already there] or otherwise drag it to the volume/library/screen savers folder which is for every user.

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha madog,

I run my Macs from a standard user account, but whhen I install screen savers, I normally install them for all users (my Administrator account as well as my standard account) even though I almost never log into the Administrator account. Once I enter in the Administrator account's user name and password, I get the error window posted in my original post.

I took your advice in simply dragged and dropped the screen saver into /Volume/Library/Screen Savers and it worked like a charm! Thanks for that - I didn't know the paths before. I'll take a closer look at just what it is the Library folders.

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha madog,

Just one more question - do you know to which particular preference pane the error window refers? I looked in /Volume/Library/Preferences (under com.apple.xxxx), but didn't see anything with screen savers in it. As you can tell, I'm still pretty much a newbie with Macs, and can use all the assistance you can provide.

I just attempted to install the ThinkDifferent screen saver again, but am still having a problem. I selected my boot drive, input the Administrator account's credentials, then after the install program indicated success checked for the screen savers (that package contains two), I checked - they weren't installed however, as you can tell from the following screen shots (they don't appear in the list of screen savers even though it's in the /Volumn/Library/Receipts folder). I'm thinking that if the preference pane issue is resolved, then the screen saver install issue (this time from a .pkg file) will also be resolved.

Mahalo Nui Loa for your assistance,

HawaiiMacAddict

 

[madog]

Preference panes for the system would be located in volume/system/library/preferencepanes and any user specific ones would be located in you user/library/preferencepanes [again, if you've never installed them for a specific user I don't believe the folder would be there].

I really don't know what would be causing the error especially when you're just trying to install a screen saver and the resulting error is about removing a pref.pane. Pretty strange.

If you've never run repair permissions before I suggest trying it. To do this open up the DiskUtility program located in your applications/utilities folder, select your main drive from the list that appears on the left of the window, and select the "repair permissions" under the blank white field that's in the middle of the window.

If not too many items show up has having incorrect permissions, it will be easy to check and see if the screen savers in question are listed. If so, try installing them the same way you were when you receive the error and see if that doesn't fix the problem.

Edit: I've been searching around and found that this problem may be due to an actual preference file being corrupt [or still hanging around] from a preferencepane that you might have tried uninstalling recently. There is a little program I found that can verify the preferences but not actually do anything [great, huh?]. It can be found at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19951. After installing the app on your drive, launch it and after a few moments of gathering info you can click the lock on the bottom right and use an admin name/pass to unlock the program for use. After that, select the "Clean" tab and in the pull down menu select "Validate Preference Files" then select "Go". The app did actually find 3 corrupt preferences in my user folder, volume library and volume/system/library/systemconfiguration edit: [just found another folder in volume/library/preferences/systemconfig, probably the one it's referring to]. However unspecific, it could be the problem.

Also, with that program, like many others [onyx, cocktail] it can run various system scans and maintenance utilities all at once. If you select the "Auto" tab and at the bottom right pull-down-menu you can select "All Tasks" you can have the app perform these at any desired interval though I would recommend just performing them every month or so if you so choose. It will take about 20 minutes to perform everything and will require a restart afterwards [only a few of those tasks actually require a restart but since you are performing them all] which might take a little longer than usual due to the system creating files and cleaning itself up.

Back to the corrupt preferences..... not quite sure what to do on that if it is a problem. I made a post at the company's forum asking what the deal is with that. It's probably not too big of a deal to delete your preferences [more of a hassle than anything I'd imagine] the SystemConfig folder is a different story. Don't know much about that either. I'll get back to ya.

Found another app at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20306/appzapper whose sole purpose is to delete apps along with their little files like preferences that are around the system. Though most likely you already deleted whatever file it was resulting in the "%@" in the error.