How to unhide preference files?

[Monkeychemist]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to install a program on my computer and unfortunately an old preference/registry type file is causing errors where I have to enter my credentials every time I launch it. It's extremely annoying! By the way, I am using a legitimate installer with a legitimate site license for my school. I have been trying to work with tech support and they are the ones that told me I need to manually remove all these little registry files. The problem is that some are hidden in folders and since they are hidden they don't even come up in searches!

The latest I was told was that it would be in this folder:
/Users/Shared/Library/Preferences/

How do I make those files visible/searchable? Better yet, how do I make ALL my files on my computer visible and searchable?? I hate having files that are hidden from me as if I was incapable of managing them on my own.

Thank you very much!

 

[Weaselboy]

Type the following commands in Terminal. Follow each line by return.

Repeats same commands with FALSE to rehide.

Or you can use a utility app like Onyx to just click for the same results.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Be careful what you change/delete because some of these files are hidden to protect them and you can really jack up your system.

 

[Monkeychemist]

Type the following commands in Terminal. Follow each line by return.

Repeats same commands with FALSE to rehide.

Or you can use a utility app like Onyx to just click for the same results.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Be careful what you change/delete because some of these files are hidden to protect them and you can really jack up your system.

Thank you very much! After that code, it was an easy search to find the bad file and now it works perfectly. It's funny, they try so hard to prevent piracy that for those of us using proper licenses it becomes a nightmare. My school spends about $20,000 / a year to use Chemdraw and I wanted to make sure it was perfectly up to par.

Thank you very much again!