Hello: I recently upgraded 2 production macs to OS 10.3.4. Everything was hunky dory and functioning fine until one user decided to download Limewire. Ever since then, whenever this user creates a file in pretty much any folder on their mac and passes it over to the other mac to be edited, the permissions of the file change to read only, thereby preventing the other user from opening the file.

I have tried repairing permissions and have re-installed Mac OS X using Archive and install, deleted the offending users account and created a completely new one - all to no avail. I am able to open the file and manually change the permissions, however, as soon as I close the Get Info box and re-open it agin the permissions revert back to the incorrect settings - even when I'm loogged in as root!

Any ideas I'd be most grateful to hear! Im slowly going mad . . .

When you manually change the permissions, make sure that it is the Administrator account that is enabled. Change the permissions (after making sure that you are the owner under Details) to Read and Write (I'm sure that this is what you tried).

If nothing works, do the more expensive and time-consuming thing: a back up of alll files and a clean Install of OSX by completely erasing the HD (and any partitions).

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

Hey! Waitaminit! Read only shouldn't prevent the other user from reading the files.

__________________
iMac G4 OSX 10.3.9
RAM 256MB
LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

my mistake: the user can open the file, they can't edit or save it. ABoth users are admin users (its a v small network). I think as you suggest I may be best to start from scratch unfortunately . ..