Reinstalling adobe illustrator cs 5 preferences without reinstalling the whole package

Question

Someone in one of your forums said that on a Mac to revert all my Illustrator prefs back to the defaults all I had to do was start the program while holding down Shift/Opt/Ctrl/Command .. when I did that we lost ALL of our items in the window palettes. Now we have NO brushes, NO colors, NO swatches, etc.
I have 27 computers in this classroom and if I have to reinstall the entire CS5 Suite every time the preferences get funky it's going to be an ugly time between me and Adobe. I'm already frustrated with having to sign on to each machine and update Flash Player every couple of weeks. It's so computer intensive.
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Answer 1

DrDebi1,
I always offer/suggest the reversible preference reset, see 4) on the list; and some non invasive ways to solve issues.
The following is a general list of things you may try when the issue is not in a specific file (you may have tried/done some of them already); 1) and 2) are the easy ones for temporary strangenesses, and 3) and 4) are specifically aimed at possibly corrupt preferences); 5) is a list in itself, and 6) is the last resort.
If possible/applicable, you should save curent artwork first, of course.
1) Close down Illy and open again;
2) Restart the computer (you may do that up to at least 5 times);
3) Close down Illy and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup (easy but irreversible);
4) Move the folder (follow the link with that name) with Illy closed (more tedious but also more thorough and reversible);
5) Look through and try out the relevant among the Other options (follow the link with that name, Item 7) is a list of usual suspects among other applications that may disturb and confuse Illy, Item 15) applies to CC, CS6, and maybe CS5);
Even more seriously, you may:
6) Uninstall, run the Cleaner Tool (if you have CS3/CS4/CS5/CS6/CC), and reinstall.
http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html