'Your network settings have been changed by another app' - THE SOLUTION

I've started the procedure that was described at the top of this thread, but before I followed through all the way (as in rebooted) I ran into something really weird. I'd been in the wrong library - the one from my home folder, not the one belonging to my hard drive.

So suddenly all my preferences were temporarily gone. Every single one. I had to set up mail again, iTunes acted as if I'd never booted the program before (and put me into a German version of iTunes, grrr..), same for Skype etc. All my sounds had changed, and my default font on Firefox.

And then I discovered a boatload of prefs, in fact all of them, in a folder above the preferences, with a time stamp from about the time these prefs had disappeared - in the Mozilla folder. I must have inadvertently moved the entire folder up one level while playing around! So I copied that back to where it belonged - but not before making a backup copy on my desktop - and now that works fine.

So do I really have to move all of three prefs to the trash?
com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist
Or can I just move the second of three?

BTW, com.apple.nat.plist doesn't apply to my situation, and I don't have it in that folder.

It's generally just the 4th and 1st one that need trashing, the nat won't exist unless you've ever used Internet Sharing.

Hi Radiothomas

I have no SystemConfiguration folder in my home>preferences, so what did you exactly trash?

To BDAqua:
Radiothomas wrote:

So do I really have to move all of three prefs to the trash?
com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist
Or can I just move the second of three?

What do you mean by "the 4th"?
Could you specify, what files really are to be trashed?

Thanks P

Sorry about that, my vision is very poor, and it's getting harder to focus...

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

These are generally the ones, but it depends on how you've setup your Network(s) in the past.

Thank you BDAqua, I'm sorry to hear about your eyes.
Regards P

Seems that the actual security update does not solve the problem as well 😟

Thanks for the help resolving the "network settings have been changed by another application" message. My network preferences is now working. However, I need HELP! I still can not get any files to print. I have many projects to finish for Christmas. I know it is related to this previous problem with the network settings. Also, does recognize when I try to "connect to server" from my laptop to my desktop (where settings were originally messed up). Help me, someone. Christmas is coming with not printers working!

Hi AubreyM, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

Feel free to start a new topic to get the most help for your problems. 🙂

Printing & Faxing...
http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=756

Getting Online & Networking ...

http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=755

Bravo, Jona! Boy, was that a frustrating problem. Whereas some might have been quick enough to get to the Network buttons before the message window re-appeared, I wasn't even close!
One caveat: It took me awhile to find "Library". Use Spotlight to find the Library Folder-- it has brightly colored books on its outside.
A question for Jona: How did you figure this out

I've deleted all the files yep it stops the looped error, however, as soon as I try to use my mobile internet modem it re-occurs.

Hi nobigfish, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

I don't have a mbile at all to test, but it seems that it would have another plist invoved.

I'ts quite acceptable to start a new topicc to get help for your particular problem, maybe here...

http://discussions.apple.com/post!default.jspa?forumID=755

Many Thanks Jona,
the solution worked perfectly.
AWESOME !!

Because of the potential for complications, we have decided to not install this Security Update for the two computers running 10.4.11 here. One of them (an iMac G5) very occasionally must use dial up to get by during short outages of our high speed internet, and I am leery of messing with what is a smooth operation for that switch back and forth between cable modem and telephone modem. The laptop with 10.4.11 has numerous wireless access point locations and passwords stored which I don't want to have to spend time re-entering, plus it is used with a Verizon Broadband card for high speed mobile internet access sometimes, which no doubt will be glitched by the deletion of those preference files.

It seems that this SOLUTION works reasonably well for people without complex combinations of internet access/passwords, but I just don't feel like spending the time to go through this and possibly encounter complications. I'll live without this last Security Update, forever if need be. I don't think I should have to be taking such manual measures to make up for a bug in an Apple update, so I just won't apply the update until Apple resolves it.

null

Well, ya know, I most likely had a far more complex set of Locations/Interfaces/Passwords/Connections & interfaces than you... and I couldn't make the problem happen to save my like on several Macs, including fresh Installs where I tried to duplicate several setups of those having problems.

Not that I'm tying to talk you into doing it in anyway... I think it's wise to not do it if you don't need to... I only did it to see what the problem was all about! 🙂

I installed this Security Update on a "clone" of my internal drive, which I had cloned to an external firewire drive (using SuperDuper). I booted from the external drive and installed the Security Update and the problem appeared. So I decided not to install it in my main environment. At work, where we have many Macs, numerous users reported this problem and it caused big headaches for the IT support people. I decided just to avoid the mess.

I believe, from what I've read, that if there is no PPP type setting requiring a password in one's locations, then it is possible the problem won't appear. (But I don't think anyone really understands all the ways that this problem manifests itself or doesn't manifest itself.) We have a PPP dial up setting (rarely used, but when needed we want it to be available) on the iMac G5, and the Verizon broadband card is actually set up simply as a very high speed (5 Mbs) modem with PPP via an installer that keeps the details pretty much hidden from the user. I could easily re-configure the dial up setting on the one computer, but the Verizon broadband setup on the other is something I don't care to get into by deleting preference files.

If my trial run on the external clone hadn't shown the problem, I would have proceeded with the Security Update. This is really the first time I have really been disappointed by Apple in one of these updates, although it never really affected me because I typically wait a couple of weeks, during which time reports like these start to surface if something is amiss.