Last week I kept getting an AppleShare Error -5002 whenever I would try to connect to our Windows 2000 file server from my Mac OS X iBook.

I wasn't able to diagnose it for a while, but eventually, I switched to using SMB to connect rather than AFP. After I did that I was able to connect but the bug kept bugging me.

I noted that if I logged on as my Backup User, I could connect using AppleShare just fine, so I figured I messed something up in the preferences of just my user account, rather than some system-wide setting.

Eventually, I rebooted my iBook into OS 9 and poked around my "/Users/~[user]/Library/" and found the file ".GlobalPreferences.plist" which seems to be a total dumping ground for Apple's own sub-systems. (Note the "." at the start of the file name which hides it from the OS X Finder, but not from the OS 9 Finder.)

I compared the .GP.plist for a new user to that of my regular account, and lo and behold, the new user .GP.plist was virtually empty. So I guessed that I could remove almost anything I wanted to out of the .GP.plist for my regular user and the worst I'd have to worry about was reseting some System Preferences.

This is what I did (while running OS 9):

1) I made a backup of the ".GlobalPreferences.plist" just in case.

2) Inside of the .GlobalPreferences.plist I found the block of Key & Dict that was for AppleShareClientCore. (I've included it in the Read More section.)

3) I deleted the <key> </key> and everything inside the <dict></dict> from the .GlobalPreferences.plist

4) I saved the .GlobalPreferences.plist file and rebooted back into X.

5) I tried connecting (via AppleShare/AFP) and it worked.

Now, I'm virtually certain that you could do this while running OS X as well, so if you can't run 9, don't worry.

I would recommend at least Logging out, if not rebooting after you save the changes. I don't know if these preferences get cached in memory or not, so it just seems like the safe thing to do.

<key>com.apple.AppleShareClientCore</key>
<dict>
   <key>afp_authtype_show</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_cleartext_allow</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_cleartext_warn</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_debug_level</key>
   <integer>0</integer>
   <key>afp_debug_syslog</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_keychain_add</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_keychain_search</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_login_displayGreeting</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_mount_defaultFlags</key>
   <integer>0</integer>
   <key>afp_prefs_version</key>
   <integer>0</integer>
   <key>afp_reconnect_allow</key>
   <true/>
   <key>afp_reconnect_interval</key>
   <integer>10</integer>
   <key>afp_reconnect_retries</key>
   <integer>12</integer>
   <key>afp_ssh_allow</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_ssh_force</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_ssh_require</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_ssh_warn</key>
   <false/>
   <key>afp_voldlog_skipIfOnly</key>
   <false/>
</dict>

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