Just two days after Intuit Inc. said it had finally come up with a permanent patch for a bug in QuickBooks on the Mac that erased files from users’ hard drives, the company acknowledged it has not completely fixed the flaw.

Users who apply the patch — available for manual download since Monday and scheduled to be automatically downloaded to all machines running QuickBooks 2006 for Mac starting Thursday morning — are still at risk if they run the accounting software while in range of a wireless hot spot, said Ian Vacin, offering leader for Intuit’s Mac finance line, in a posting to the product’s support forum Monday afternoon.

“We have determined that the prior bug re-manifests itself when QuickBooks Pro 2006 for Mac is initiated at public Internet hotspots and a redirection error occurs (for instance, when you are at a cafe that requires you to pay to use its services),” said Ian Vacin, offering leader of Intuit’s Mac financial software in a posting to QuickBooks Web site discussion board.

Vacin explained that an upcoming “R5″ patch, expended to be released today, fixes the problem completely by entirely disabling the product upgrade mechanism that caused the desktop file deletion in the first place.