I am running 10.1.5 on a TiBook with 512 Mb of RAM. Recently, the System Prefs application would "unexpectedly quit" whenever I tried to either edit an existing user or create a new user. I debugged it by launching Console (in /Applications -> Utilities) and watched the error message as I tried to edit a user. The error message said that it was unable to open a TIFF. Hmmm...
I navigated to Library -> User Pictures and checked out the permissions on the pictures that I had assigned for the current users. Lo and behold the permissions for the two pictures that were assigned to the two users were different that the other pictures that I had not used. I changed the two to match the other pics and voila, my System Prefs app no longer crashes. I even created a new user with no problems. Hope this helps somebody.
[Editor's note: It appears that correct permissions are rw-rw-r--, which can be set via a "sudo chmod u=rw,g=rw,o=r pic_name.tiff" or "sudo chmod 664 pic_name.tiff" (I think I got that right). Running the "Repair Disk Permissions" tool on the First Aid tab of Disk Copy might also fix this problem, but I haven't tested it myself.]
I navigated to Library -> User Pictures and checked out the permissions on the pictures that I had assigned for the current users. Lo and behold the permissions for the two pictures that were assigned to the two users were different that the other pictures that I had not used. I changed the two to match the other pics and voila, my System Prefs app no longer crashes. I even created a new user with no problems. Hope this helps somebody.
[Editor's note: It appears that correct permissions are rw-rw-r--, which can be set via a "sudo chmod u=rw,g=rw,o=r pic_name.tiff" or "sudo chmod 664 pic_name.tiff" (I think I got that right). Running the "Repair Disk Permissions" tool on the First Aid tab of Disk Copy might also fix this problem, but I haven't tested it myself.]
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