Preferences not honored

Question

I find a web page showing Flash content (since Macromedia has
yet to provide a client-side utility for configuring their Flash
Player AX control). I right-click and hit the Advanced button which
opens a new browser to Macromedia's web pages that display the
configuration manager. I then go under the Global Storage Settings
Panel and set to zero the cache size for local .sol cookie files
from sites and also enable the option to Never Ask Again. Sounds
good in that sites won't be able to leave their .sol cookies on my
host but it doesn't work.
As a test and after setting the cache to zero (so supposedly
no .sol cookies will get left on my host), I visit a test site (
http://www.mystrevelation.com/).
I click on the Skip Intro to get to their next page. Then I do a
search on .sol files on my host and lo and behold there is
"C:\Documents and Settings\<myProfile>\Application
Data\Macromedia\Flash
Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\#mystrevelation.com\settings.sol".
I exit the browser (IE) figuring that maybe the .sol file is
allowed as a per-session cookie and that it will get purged when I
exit the browser. Nope, that site-specific .sol cookie file
remains.
So much for the Flash Player complying with its own settings.
I have also noticed that eventually those settings are completely
ignored and set back to their install-time defaults. After a few
months when the topic of .sol cookies comes up again, I look at my
preferences and none of them are set the way they were and instead
are back to their defaults.
A similar problem is that I will clean up the directories
where some .sol cookies were saved after setting the configuration
to delete all those sites. Under the Website Storage Settings Panel
panel in its configuration manger, I deleted all sites. Yet when I
look under "C:\Documents and Settings\<myProfile>\Application
Data\Macromedia\Flash
Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys", there they are
again when I next visit a page with Flash content. There are no
.sol files within them (i.e., they are empty) but all those
directories get recreated for sites that had previously save .sol
cookie files on my host. Yeah, like I really want to want disk
space in the file system to restore empty directories, especially
when I am zeroing out the Flash cache and not allowing any site to
save the .sol cookie on my host. While 9 of these empty directories
get recreated, only 2 are listed under the Website Storage Settings
Panel panel. Well, they aren't all empty. My ISP's home page
(www.comcast.net) uses Flash and leaves a .sol file under
"C:\Documents and Settings\<myProfile>\Application
Data\Macromedia\Flash
Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\#www.comcast.net\settings.sol"
(but I'm in the browser while posting this message so maybe it
doesn't get deleted until I finally exit the last instance of IE).
The settings won't stick for long. .sol cookies are still
getting put onto my host. Directories (mostly empty) are getting
recreated for prior visited sites.

Answer 1

V.K. wrote:
mkramer wrote:
Edit: the preferences were ghosted because of the renaming of the app. Un-renaming the app and they're back. The preferences stick on a new admin account.
if the preferences stick on the new account the problem is local to your main account. it could be some corrupt cache or preference files although I don't know which ones.
It seems so.
Locking the files did not work.
i suspect it did. when you lock those files, the system can not change them and whatever changes are made from software system preferences are not written to the hard drive. do the files remain locked when you log out/in?
This is what I did.
1). Uncheck setting.
2). Quit and reopen SUPP. The setting is still unchecked. It appears that my settings have been saved to disk.
3). Quit SUPP
4). Lock the com.apple.SoftwareUpdate plist.
5). Open SUPP. The offending preference has reset!
6). Quit and open SUPP. Offending preference still on.
7). Uncheck preference with file locked.
8). Quit and open SUPP. Unchecked preference still unchecked.
9). Log out and in. Preference rechecked.
So you see, locking does not work. It appears that the act of locking the plist actually resets the preference, or causes SUPP to revert to different version of the plist which is wrong and which is not set by the Software Preference Pane GUI.
Message was edited by: mkramer