Problem
You make changes to the Security settings in System Preferences but when you go back to them, you see that the changes were not saved.
Cause
There may be a permission error in your user directory.
Knowledge base for Windows, Mac & Assistive Technology.
I’m running Lion now, and it’s doing this to me. It never did this to me for snow leopard, and no matter what i do, it won’t save my security settings. i don’t want it to require a password immediately after the screensaver comes on, i want it to wait fifteen minutes. but it won’t change no matter what i do.
Hi Melissa,
If you make a new user account, does it still do the same thing?
Hey guys,
This was bugging me so badly, so I search Apple support, and followed some instructions I found, and now everything is back to normal. Here’s are the steps to follow:
1) Put in your Mac OS X installation CD (mine was an old one with Mac OS X Leopard)
2) Restart your Mac, and hold down the C key on your keyboard during startup
3) When the welcome screen pops up, it will ask you what language you want to select. Select your language and click next.
4) On the next screen’s menu bar, click Utilities, go down to Reset Password. Choose which user you want to edit, and DON’T change the password, (unless you want to.) At the bottom of the Reset Password Utility screen, there will be something that says Repair Permissions to home directory, or something of the sort. Click Repair.
I also went to Utilities and Repaired Permissions for my disk. (I don’t know if its necessary, but I did it anyway.)
This should do it. It worked for me! Hope it works for you.
I found the information in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963 (Right at the first “NOTE:”)
Thanks for your reply Alwin. I have updated the solution and written a new article with 3 different methods in which you can reset the home folder permissions.