How to remove grayed out unknown login item Snow Leopard

How to remove grayed out unknown login item Snow Leopard After installing Snow Leopard my map network drive application didn't work any more. No problem, but it left an unknown login item that is grayed out and cannot be removed the normal way (also in administrator mode).
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 276

Total answers/comments: 2

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bert [Entry]

"First of all, on the nature of this ""UNKNOWN"". One of the places where OS keeps a record of login items is loginwindow.plist. The items are stored in a dictionary as name/kind/path values. If one of the applications adds an item not following the pattern it's displayed as ""UNKNOWN"".

Most probably this record came from network user account software (Active Directory or similar). You can open /Library/Managed Preferences/your-user-name/loginwindow.plist to double check (XCode or TextWrangler can do that). Under AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary you should see a list of login items. If one of them doesn't follow name/kind/path structure it will be displayed as UNKNOWN. In my case, I have the following:

<dict>
<key>AuthenticateAsLoginUserShortName</key>
<true/>
<key>MCX-NetworkHomeDirectoryItem</key>
<true/>
</dict>

For a network user account it's impossible to get rid of ""UNKNOWN"" login item, as loginwindow.plist is created anew on each login."

bert [Entry]

You can try to find unknown items in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist or /Users/$username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist, and then try to delete the items, use plist. If you can't delete the items, just delete the file, it's ok.
You can try to find unknown items in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist or /Users/$username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist, and then try to delete the items, use plist. If you can't delete the items, just delete the file, it's ok.