Archive for the ‘Mac’ Category:
Bought a MacBook Pro in the Last 17 Months?
Bad Nvidia chips are thought to be causing problems in some MacBook Pros manufactured since May, 2007. Is your MacBook Pro acting loopy, distorted? Or did your MacBook Pro’s screen turn black one day and never come back on? Read Apple’s offical support alert from October 10th, 2008 to find out what to do.
All those who did not provide Apple with an email address to “stay in touch” (let’s see those hands!), might be at a disadvantage, here, so help spread the word to anyone you know who owns the one of these duds. If your laptop falls within those dates, and your video card is failing or fails within two years of your purchase date, Apple is gonna fixit. Yes, even if your warranty has expired. If you don’t happen to run across this recall/repair offer, Steve Jobs will personally come to your house to replace it and apologize… but you’re going to be out that night, so It’s up to your blogo-friends with no social life to get to you first to tell you that you didn’t ruin the best computer you’ve ever had. Remember, they are responsible. Let the race begin!
Your network settings have been changed by another application
In case you didn’t get that:
“Your network settings have been changed by another application.”
Oh, by the way,
“Your network settings have been changed by another application.”
That’s pretty annoying, right? Even more so when it’s a semi-automatic pop-up alert that won’t quit. If you’re a G4 user running Mac OS X 10.4.11, chances are you fairly good that in the last week or so, you have been bludgeoned with this extremely annoying and seemingly unprovoked nuisance after trying to open your Network settings in System Preferences. Or it is still out there waiting for you!
To escape the barrage of foolishness that traps you in a loop of window clicking is to either agree, then quickly draw for the Command-Q, or, if you’re not fast enough, Option-Command-Esc to Force Quit out of Dodge (i.e., System Preferences). Either way, you’re left confused and annoyed until you can’t help but try it again.
The problem? It seems that Security Update 2008-006 for OS X 10.4.11 makes a few network related system files a little, well, loopy. I guess an update that keeps you from changing network settings could be considered a form of security. Ah, that’s it! If lifelong Mac users want to know what Microsoft Vista is like—what with all its heightened security, and all—then they need only get caught in this senseless “please click ‘okay’ again” loop.
Don’t bother repairing permissions or optimizing whatever, it will just be a waste of time. What you need to do is delete the following misbehaving files:
Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
com.apple.nat.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist
Afterward, restart your computer. NOTE BENE: If you have a long or complex list of Location settings and/or other custom network configurations saved, you better make sure you have a backup copy of this information somewhere. After reboot, how do they say… oh, yes: All Your Saved Network Settings Will Be Halfway to Hell!
UPDATE: Pieter B. posted this Comment:
“A simpler fix I found tonight is to open System Preferences, go to Security and check “Require password to unlock each secure system preference.” Badda boom, badda bing.”
Thought I should add this to the main post, so it won’t get missed. Tried it, it works! Sometimes the solution is difficult to find because it’s so simple and, in hindsight, very obvious. Thanks, Pieter!
Tags: Mac