How can I find the application that created a preference file: User/Library/Preferenc

[richisgame]

Drive Genius alerted me, through it's event viewer, that there were 2 corrupt preferences that I should trash.

I did not recognize the name of the preference files, and googling the preferences names, (even the individual parts of the name, between the periods), yielded no results.

So I trashed the two preferences, and a few days later they were there again. I tried reopening apps I had recently used to see if they would crreate these preferences, but no luck.

Can anyone tell me how to trace a preference to its parent/creator?

Thanks!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2011 17" 240gb SSD (750gb drive in optibay)

 

[Bear]

What were the names of the preferences files? And are you sure they were really corrupted? Or were they just not in a format that Drive Genius recognizes as valid?

 

[richisgame]

Thanks for the reply Bear...

Here are the names of the two "violators."

com.tonywave.wanion.plist

com.TegraUSA.MediaFiber.plist

Drive Genius "said" they were corrupted.
Here is Drive Genius' "Even Viewer," readout. (It's a wide shot I know...)

 

[Bear]

What does Drive Genius mean by corrupt file?

Without knowing that, it's hard to say what the issue is.

You're best bet is to go in to Disk Utility, select your boot partition and under First Aid, verify the disk (roughly lower right hand corner of the window). And see if that generates any errors.

 

[richisgame]

There are no errors in Disk Utility.

The main question here though is not so much the example, as much as I would like to know the specific answer.

The real question is: is there any way to identify the parent/creator of a preference file?

 

[Mal]

Preference files are named with a reverse domain naming scheme. Thus, the file named com.tonywave.wanion.plist should be for a product named Wanion from a developer named Tony Wave. I'm not familiar with a product named that, so it's likely it was a developer that didn't follow the correct conventions.

If you don't recognize them, they are safe to delete (because they are plist files, they will be automatically recreated if needed).

jW

 

[richisgame]

Thanks for jumping in...

I am not worried about deleting the files.

I was just using this example to ask a broader question as to how one can identify the source of a preference, (aside from the name of course.)

Is there any other metadata identifier, that Finder doesn't readily offer as a viewable option, that identifies its creator/parent/source?

Like perhaps a third party app?