Sys preferences crashing

[shifty_uk]

Opened the macbook tonight to find it wouldn't wake from sleep mode - I had to restart by holding the off button. Upon restarting the fan is going crazy and system preferences won't open without crashing the computer. I tried restarting several times to be confronted with the same issue each time. Safari works, as do my pictures, applications etc but I have no clock, battery display or bluetooth nor do the system preferences work without crashing the computer completely. Oh and the fan is still going nuts.

Any ideas? I've made backups, just incase.

 

[Feek]

Try deleting the system preferences plist file.

~/library/preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist

 

[OllyM]

Sounds like you've got a problem with MenuCracker (it lets third parties add stuff that behave like OS X native menus to the menu bar) - my iMac did something very similar after one of the recent updates.