Resetting Preferences the eazy way

Question

It seems the universal cure for just about any problem in InDesign is "resetting the preferences". It sounds like Adobe decided to add this option in a rather obfuscated way -- something you could have customer support tell clients over the phone, and impress the hell out of them. Well, it bit them right back, as it seems everyone needs to do that every now and then.
To reset preferences, start your InDesign
b pressing Shift, Control, and Alt keys down.
Now, with these keys down, you cannot start the program by double-clicking, so you have to start it and
i then
whack those keys as fast as you can. As InDesign should ask you on startup whether you wish to reset or not, this expert advice is usually followed by "... if it doesn't, you weren't fast enough."
A tip for the slow of hand: locate the program on your desktop or in your Start menu, press-and-hold the three magic buttons, right-click InDesign with the mouse and select "Open".

Answer 1

The usual caveats about saving all your presets to external files FIRST so you don't lose them continue to apply (you do that by selecting them in the various "define" dialogs and clicking "save"). Resetting preferences removes all the custom stuff you added (though your workspaces and keyboard shortcut sets will be safe) and you'll need to reload document and printer presets after doing this.
You can also find the two files InDesign Defaults and InDesign SavedData in your user profile (you'll need to show hidden files in Explorer) and simply rename them with ID closed. They'll be replaced, but not destroyed, when ID restarts (without fumbling with the keyboard) and if it should turn out new prefs don't fix whatever was wrong, you can shut down ID and go back to Explorer, delete the new files, and rename the old ones back.
Where, you ask, are these files? With so many versions of InDesign and Windows it's getting too complex to list all of the locations (but they will always be in your user profile). In CS and CS2 they will be together under something like Application Settings\Adobe\InDesign\[version]\ for CS3 the defaults will be there, and the saved data will be somewhere like Local Settings\Application Settings\Adobe\InDesign\[version]\caches, and CS4 adds another level (folder) with your language, like en-US, to the path. A file search in Explorer that includes hidden files should turn them up wherever they are hiding.
Finally, once you have a set of defaults that seems to be what you want and working smoothly, go find those two files and save copies somewhere safe (and someplace you'll remember). Use the copies to replace the current set any time you have doubts.
Peter