OS X Leopard Screen Saver Preference Pane Hangs

I got a unibody MacBook Pro 17″ recently.  I had some issues with that one and I had it replaced with a new one. (There is a lot more to this story and you can read about it on my personal blog.)

I get the replacement unibody MacBook and I do a restore from Time Machine.  I had previously installed all my apps from scratch on the exact same Mac before it died. (again see other post)  I log in for the first time and I do all my updates.  Everything works great!  Except for one thing:

Everytime I open my Screen Saver Preference pane…  I get the Beach Ball and my System Preferences hangs and I must force quit!

I google and google…  Finally I found a fix at the Apple Support Discussions:  Screen Saver Preference Pane Lockup thanks swmbuk!

Let me lay out the Symptoms and summarize the fix: Read more