Repair Permissions messed up network preferences I ran repair permissions a few days ago, because other accounts on my computer couldn't open system preferences (this problem persists, but I don't care about it very much). What does bother me, however, is that it seems to have messed up numerous network permissions.

Specifically,


My home network is no longer recognized as a "preferred network." When I wake from sleep, my home network is in the list directing me to select a different network. When I direct the computer to join my network, it says "a connection timeout occurred" and then joins anyways. This does not happen on the campus wireless network.
I can no longer connect to my campus VPN. I get an error that the "shared secret" is not available. When I enter the shared secret and apply in network preferences, the shared secret is cleared.


I have already deleted and recreated my login keychain. And as repairing permissions got me into this place, I don't feel it is my way out.
Since several files appear to be either missing or corrupt, now might be a good time to check that you have a good backup of your data and then see about booting to a Recovery HD or other bootable media and seeing if the disk catalog itself needs repair.

You might also have a technician look at the hard drive if there are lots of problems with the disk. Most can be fixed by wiping the drive and then reinstalling the OS and finally restoring your applications and files from a backup. Of course, corrupt files like you are seeing in the network preferences could get backed up in a poor state - so you might still need to find and clean things one by one, but hopefully this is the extent of the problems.