Strange folders in Preference folder??

[Bern]

A couple of strange folders seem to have appeared in my friend's ~/Library/Preference folder.

They are the first two at the top of the screen shot below. Does anyone know what they could be? I've never seen these before.

 

[cb911]

that is weird.

he didn't just accidentally click on the folder name and then randomly mash the keyboard did he?

let us know what's in the folders... that could give clues. also if you can't see anything in there from the Finder, open up Termanal and see if you get anything with ls -ln (whatever the flag is to show invisible files )

BTW - your avatar freaks me out.

 

[letterbox]

Somewhere along the way, your Preferences have corrupted themselves. Rename you current Preferences folder to something like, Preferences Copy or Preferences1. The Preferences folder will recreate itself, and you are set. You will need to reset the preferences for each application. So, for example if you have smooth scrolling turned on in Appearences, or if you use tabs in Safari, those kinds of things will need to be redone. You can also move the corresponding Preference file from the old Preferences the the new ones. If you are not familiar with this, the Apple Preferences are named like this: com.apple.mail.plist for Mail, or com.apple.safari.plist.

That should fix your problem. But if it is a recurring one, you may be in for an Archive and Install, or maybe a clean install if it is at the user level.

Good Luck.

 

[Coheebuzz]

I've noticed this on my Mac about a month ago and i did what letterbox suggested, that is delete the Prefs folder, however they came back after a while.
Here is a screenshot, i've got hundreds of them. My machine doesn't crash and i have 0 problems with it so i don't see a reason to reinstall. Although am curious

 

[Bern]

Somewhere along the way, your Preferences have corrupted themselves. Rename you current Preferences folder to something like, Preferences Copy or Preferences1. The Preferences folder will recreate itself, and you are set. You will need to reset the preferences for each application. So, for example if you have smooth scrolling turned on in Appearences, or if you use tabs in Safari, those kinds of things will need to be redone. You can also move the corresponding Preference file from the old Preferences the the new ones. If you are not familiar with this, the Apple Preferences are named like this: com.apple.mail.plist for Mail, or com.apple.safari.plist.

That should fix your problem. But if it is a recurring one, you may be in for an Archive and Install, or maybe a clean install if it is at the user level.

Good Luck.

These folders appeared straight after doing an erase and install, so I don't think it could be a corrupted preference?? Not sure.

Although something that could be related is he gets strange symbols or fonts from time to time in the odd mail he receives in Apple Mail. I wonder if Mail is somehow corrupted?