Mac OS 10.4 Network Preference Problem “Your network settings have been changed by another application” Solved

Posted on October 15th, 2008 in Mac OS by amida168


I helped one user to solve a strange network preference problem today. The machine is a Macbook Pro running 10.4.11. According to the user, after he updated it with the 2008-006 patch from Apple, he started to get this message whenever he clicks on the Network preference in System Preferences.

Your network settings have been changed by another application.

If you click on OK, the message would pop up again right away and you cannot do anything about it until you force quit the System Preferences.

There is a discussion thread on Apple Support forum, which gave me hints to solve the problem. It turns out the security patch changes the way of saving PPP (or PPPoE) passwords. If you have a network profile that has PPP (or PPPoE) passwords, you would run into this problem. The way to fix it, is just resetting the passwords.

Here are the steps.

  1. Log on as a administrator on the machine.
  2. Run “System Preferences”.
  3. Click on “Security”.
  4. Check “Require password to unlock each System Preferences pane”
  5. Click on “Show All” and then click on “Network”
  6. Now it’s the fun part. You have to find any connection that has PPP or PPoE passwords saved. When you find it, uncheck “Save Password”. Enter the password and check “Save Password” again. Note that you need to click on the Padlock on the lower left corner first to make changes. Apply the changes as needed.
  7. You can go back to the “Security” pane and uncheck “Require password to unlock each System Preferences pane”.
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12 Responses to 'Mac OS 10.4 Network Preference Problem “Your network settings have been changed by another application” Solved'

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  1. Rod Hall said,

    on October 17th, 2008 at 4:42 am

    Worked for me .. a most annoying and occasionally problematic “Apple Created Fault” has disappeared from my Power Book G4 .. mine was not just a PPP or PPoE issue. Thanks.

  2. DonAsoka said,

    on October 27th, 2008 at 2:11 pm

    Amida168 !
    Mac OS 10.4 Network Preference Problem “Your network settings have been changed by another application” Solved thanks to you and your clear simple instructions, I have been freaked for the last few days untill I found your post, , worked like a charm
    Thanks again
    Don

  3. George said,

    on October 28th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    STOP THE PRESSES!!! I’ve just found that by clicking the “show all” button at the top of the problematic system preferences box the computer will actually think that you’ve changed them and ask you to “apply” these changes. Obviously you must be very fast to click on it immediately after you’ve clicked on “done”.

  4. James said,

    on October 29th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    Thanks for the Post. That was most helpful. Great to know I wasn’t the only one experiencing this issue. So… there is one catch to this fix that had me stumped for a good while. If you have ever used an external modem on your system there could be PPP settings that you can’t get to without having the modem attached. What a pain! I could see “External Modem” in the port configurations, but it was grayed out and I couldn’t make any changes. The only way to edit the PPP password was to find a modem and plug it in. “External Modem” became an available option and I could now edit the settings. Such a stupid problem! Hope that nugget helps anyone who has a similar situation.

  5. Martin said,

    on November 3rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    Thank you for an excellent post.

    Macs are rarely this annoying, but on this occasion mine was.

    Thanks to you the problem is gone now.

  6. ratna said,

    on November 7th, 2008 at 5:06 am

    thanks , because your comment . i can change network setting again

  7. Kees said,

    on November 9th, 2008 at 8:09 am

    Thanks a lot, it helped me out.

  8. SHANNON said,

    on November 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Thank you, I was about to loose it…

  9. Susan said,

    on November 10th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Have the same problem after updating to 10.4.11 but the solution isn’t working for me. I’ve tried it twice, tried the click show all and that didn’t work either. Really agravating problem.

  10. Kathy T said,

    on November 30th, 2008 at 8:21 am

    Thank you so much for posting a fix. I have been trying for weeks to figure this out. What would we do without folks like you who have the answers! Please continue to post answers to issues as they arise! Thanks again

  11. George Khouri said,

    on December 5th, 2008 at 3:57 am

    Thanks for the post. I now can at least manage my network prefs since security update 2008-007. I didn’t have any ppp or pppoe connections and the annoying sheet did not go away. Furthermore, since the update, my G4 laptop (10.4.11) no longer connected automatically to my wireless network on wakeup. Thanks Apple. I ended up deleting all of my network locations and created a new one which seems to have worked.

  12. Richard said,

    on December 28th, 2008 at 12:22 am

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! Update problem solved. Never had a Mac update mess up things like that.

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