Reinstalling OS X 10.1 after Security Update: Readers reply on this and other Update matters

Reinstalling OS X 10.1 after Security Update MacFixIt readers remain largely stumped as to why Apple warns against reinstalling OS X 10.1 after installing the Security Update (see yesterday's item).

A few readers speculated that Apple's concern might be that the OS would report that the Security Update had been installed when in fact it no longer was. We can only hope Apple is worried about something more serious than this, if it is recommending erasing your hard drive as a solution.

Tom Straus noted that a second Administrator user he created did not have sufficient privileges to modify the Applications folder - after doing this reinstall. However, we are doubtful this is a general symptom caused by the reinstall.

More information related to the OS X and Explorer Security Updates released last week:

Quicken 2001 and OS X Security Update glitch C. Posey found that Quicken 2001 would no longer launch under Classic after installing the new OS X Security Update. He noticed some similar reports on MacInTouch. One found that deleting Quicken's prefereneces file fixed the problem.

Explorer File Helpers munged after Security Update? John Cytron found that, after installing both the OS X and Explorer Secuirty Updates, he no longer had any listings in theFile Helpers pane of Explorer's Preferences. We checked on this. In our case, the listings were still there, but there was a whole section of the listings that were essentially gibberish text. We can't be certain, however, that it was not this way before.

Update: Michael Zajac suggests that these munged files existed prior to Mac OS X 10.1 (they did for him) and can be safely deleted. Thomas Thatcher and Jeffrey Shaw confirm this.