How do I get my system preferences to show up? How do I make my system preferences show up again?  I tried logging in as another account on the same system:
close system preferences
go to your home directory and then Library then PreferencePanes. (remove ~/Library/PreferencePanes/*) remove anything in there (to you
desktop in case you want to sort through them later)
launch system preferences and see if it acts better.


if not, then go to /Library then PreferencePanes and remove anything there.  (remove /Library/PreferencePanes/*)

if it's a wonky pref pane, this should fix it, with only the system ones remaining.