Weird preferences/permissions problems...please help

Are you having permissions issues? It sounds like it. Check the permissions on your preferences folder; one problem might be that the applications cannot write the changes to your pref files.

Try creating a new user and then logging in as that user, and see if pref changes stick with that user.

rob

NewObject23 said:

Thank you partially. I deleted the preferences file for iTunes and it seemed to fix that particular problem. However, deleting preferences and repairing permissions did not fix the problems with Preview or TextEdit.

Creating another user and logging in as that user "worked," but since I would have to start over completely from scratch with that user (who cannot be automatically logged in), this is not really a good solution for me.

Any other ideas?

Click to expand...

I have read here about others having the same issue with Preview and TextEdit. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1196972/

I don't know if Apple's support forum would help or not.

Have you repaired permissions? And checked the Prefs and Library folders for permissions problems? Can you change prefs in other applications without problems?

Rob

I had a very, very similar problem with my first Lion install. There were numerous issues with settings not sticking - Finder view options would revert, System Prefs options would never stay the way I wanted, the Dock kept putting icons that I removed back in, etc etc. I knew that it was a permissions problem related to the system not being able to write to plists, but I couldn't find a way to fix it. The problem (I think) for me was that I installed using a USB stick...back when I built my first SL hackintosh, I remember that one of the most stressed points of the guide was to make sure that "ignore ownership on this volume" was UNCHECKED on the USB stick prior to installing. I re-installed with this in mind, and it worked. Now, I don't know if that's actually what fixed it, or if it was the fact that I used the copy of Lion I got from MAS rather than the GM, but the problem went away. When I installed Lion on my MBP, I decided to not risk it happening again, so I used a DVD rather than a USB stick. Sorry that I don't have a solution for you, but you may want to consider re-installing, if it comes to that. I know that in my case, if nothing else, I had a nagging feeling that my system was simply "broken" in one way or another, regardless of whether I fixed the permissions issue or not, so I opted for a fresh install.

EDIT: By the way, I can't say for sure whether or not permissions are at fault. Why? Well, on my hackintosh, after a clean install (with all settings sticking properly), I checked permissions on my root drive, and saw that my account had "custom access" but with Read/Write privileges. On my MBP, however, after being unable to run a benchmark which required write privileges to create temporary files to test disk speeds, I saw that by default, Lion had only given my admin account "read" privileges. But settings were sticking properly there, as well. I think that if anything, it's safe to say that this is simply a potential bug in Lion. I don't think it depends on the system, nor the privileges per se, I think there's something going on at a deeper level.

Yeah, I'm not going the fresh install route, I can tolerate my preferences getting lost or stolen occasionally. But I am def ready for Lion OS 10.7.2