Alert: PopChar X can delete all items from Login Items list

We have two reports from readers that the newly released PopChar X 1.0 has a serious bug: When you first launch the software, it may remove all items from the Login Items pane of the Login System Preference, except for itself.

Bill Cheeseman writes: "What happens is that PopChar X erroneously replaces the loginwindow.plist file in ~/Library/Preferences, instead of appending the PopChar X item to it. Since PopChar X defaults to turning its login item on, there may be no way to prevent this from happening whenever you launch PopChar X 1.0." Bill confirmed the main symptom by restoring his login items and relaunching PopChar, examining the plist file before and after launching PopChar.

Bill adds: "Reinstating missing login items can be a difficult process. Not only do you have to remember what login items were installed before you installed PopChar X, but some software does not give you a user interface for turning a login item back on. In such cases, you can usually reinstate a login item by using the Login Items pane's Add button to install a separate helper application from the application folder, or by dragging the helper application to the Login Items pane. In other cases, the only way to reinstate a login item is to use the Finder's contextual menu to open the application's bundle (Control-click on the application's icon) and choose Show Package Contents, then drag a helper application (usually found in the contents/resources folder in the bundle) to the Login Items pane."

Richard Peters confirms: "After installing and launching PopChar X, I did a restart and noticed something strange: all my Login Items seemed to be stalled and not loading. When I checked the Login System Preference, I found only one item there, PopChar. All else was gone. Fortunately, I backup my preferences folder and merely had to go back and replace the older copy to get back to normal (without PopChar)."

Richard received this reply from Macility: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have already received a couple of similar reports. Since the problem does not occur always and not for all users, we will first need to find out which particular circumstances cause the removal of the other login items."