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arctair

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 21, 2020
58
22
So finally got my M1/18GB 8-Core Mini yesterday. Cleaned up the office, got through the initial setup (keyboard, mouse, Apple ID, etc -- that's *it*) and I was on the desktop -- Woot! Went to System Preferences to decide on a scaling setup. The first time made it to Prefs, but went to a beachball as soon as I clicked the Display icon. After ten minutes I force quit Prefs; on the second attempted load of SP, it was beachball from the get go.

Really didn't expect this right of the box. Nothing is connected to the Mini except the 1000 GB Ethernet cable, the monitor (via Thunderbolt/USB-C to the specially flagged port on the monitor using the cable that came with the Mac, and two tiny USB dongles for the Kensington solar keyboard and Logitech mouse via an Anker USB 3.0 hub. Ball is still spinning 90 minutes later as Big Sur is wanting to start doing updates.

What could possibly be up?

1) Dongle/mouse.keyboard incompatibility?
2) USB hub incompatibly?
3) Monitor incompatibility (this is a refurb LG Ultrafine 5K, which it should drive with ease, right?)

I'd normally have gone through a whole lot pf process of elimination by now, but I've never has issues right out-of-the-box before, so thought I'd check for something well-known/obvious to everyone but me first (search turned up nothing).

Thanks,
Chris (Arctair)
 
Last edited:
See discussion here:

 
See discussion here:

Thanks... however that was my crosspost. I'll take one down if that's poor form.
 
I think it is, but I am not a moderator. I think most people find threads by searching rather than drilling down. Also, if there is a productive discussion in one thread, it benefits everyone by keeping the discussion in one place rather than splitting it up in more than one place. But that's my opinion.
 
I don't know about the original (beachball/pinwheel) problem but the following stalls in System Preferences could be related to your force quit (i.e. caused a corruption).

I suggest deleting the System Preference PLISTs.

Finder -> Go menu -> Go to Folder... -> input ~/Library/Preferences -> press Enter -> search for com.apple.systempreferences.plist --> click "Preferences" in the Search toolbar to narrow results
Sys-Prefs_prefs.png
You may see files with hex values (e.g. 06B4F9-1A2C-). They can be safely deleted as well.

If you want to be cautious, simply move them to the trash, check System Preferences. If any ill effects, too to the trash and "Put back".

Back to the original problem... Hopefully, a one-time glitch. You could use the previous process to also delete com.apple.preference.displays.plist
 
Thanks... however that was my crosspost. I'll take one down if that's poor form.

Moderator Note: It's against forum rules to start multiple threads on the same topic. See "Minor Problems" here:

https://macrumors.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201265337-Forum-Rules

2. One thread. Do not post a thread more than once. Post a new thread in the proper forum. If the topic is relevant to more than one forum, pick the best fit or most specific forum and post it only once.

3. One post. Do not post multiple messages with the same content. One post in the most appropriate thread is sufficient.
 
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