Plesk Password Protection Q

[bitstream]

On my Wordpress website; sometimes when I turn off the Plesk "Password Protection" feature, the site goes down with a "500 Internal Server Error".  The only way I have found to recover is to rebuild the web site.  The error log says "AH01620: Could not open password file: /home/system/imggallery.helioho.st/pd/d..httpdocs"

so it appears the "Password Protection" is not completely being turned off - the password file is being removed, but Apache still wants to use a password for the entire site.
Is there a proper way to resolve this?
 

[bitstream]

Added note:  This is on the Morty2 server.

[MoneyBroz]

Try waiting up to 2 hours after changing the setting, sometimes settings like this require an Apache restart to apply.