Strange, unreadable columns in username/library/preferences folder....?

Hi, I recently was asked to go into this folder, my username/library/preferences, and found a myriad of empty folders with nothing in them. The font beside each folder was completely foreign looking, with symbols unrecognizable....
is my computer corrupted by something?
what should i do? remove them all? or do they have some relation to files, programs....etc..
wildlife

Hi.
I think I know what it is, and it's probably harmless.
Check this out.
Good Luck.

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Fresh Install 10.4.11 -Library 'Preferences' Folder

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try resetting finder preferences and removing the .DS_Store file for that folder.
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Message was edited by: V.K.

Where is username/library??

I'm so fed up with this. Trying to copy any recent mail and other recent personal data since getting this new iMac, I'm stonewalled once again right at the beginning. I am trying to follow some instructions for copying Mail preferences and it says: "q1uit Mail; open Finder window; navigate to username/library/preferences..." This is such a routine thing yet on this new iMac, in Mt. Lion, no such Library file shows up.
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I mean??????

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ÒX†ê◊8øˇﬁ††~a|êŸlè¿ö(
or
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Plenty of threads on the issue:
http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?search=Go&q=strange+folders
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Ok, after 10 days with out FW CS5 on my new Lion installment. I finally cracked some kind of bug where FW would freeze just after loading and the last text in the CS5 logo was tabs and then the processor would go up to around 81% and just freeze.
Apple and Adobe, both blame each other and none could give an answer, but to re-install everything, which i just had done. (Man the big dudes are lost sometimes!)
"My" problem turned, that I seemlessly had a corrupt file in my ~/Library/Preferences/
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Hi Folks!
Its because the macromedia folder is recreated each time flash is used somehow.
I made an Automator App that
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3) Runs Adobe Fireworks CS 4
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Here is how to build your own automator app that does these three steps for you.
My finder is in danish, but I translated it in red text for you. Guess its easy to figure out:
Remember!!! If you are running Adobe Fireworks CS5 then choose that in step 3 instead :-)

Search doesn't search ~/Library/Preferences and others

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This kind of ruins the search for me, and forces me to use lame 3rd party search apps.
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Thanks

smithrj wrote:
Spotlight's settings are in system preferences, you can click them all, no big difference. Spotlight has many limitations, and is not the application it's made out to be. It will find many items, and also skip many. That's it, not so great of news. The index includes all folders, yet some will not display.
Ray
Thanks.
I'm thinking there's gotta be a command-line hack/fix to take care of this issue. I'm sure it annoys a lot of people.
Anyone?

Delete /Library/Preferences ?

One of my users has a couple of odd things going on. One is applications complaining about weird keychains. Adobe Reader was beefing about something like ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Acrobat/11.0/Security/somethingorother On that same machine, I saw something unhappy about BuddySomethingOrOther keychain. The other issue is login attempts that sit there with a spinning beach ball until the system is rebooted.
My initial thought was, "Delete all system preferences!" But I couldn't find any mentions of doing that via Google, so I figured I'd check first :-)

Ah. Your initial post noted:
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Acrobat/
Since the tilde means the user account, I the presumed you meant any preferences related to that folder, not the root Library.
For the main /Library/Preferences folder, I wouldn't touch until I knew I had a way to easily fix it in case the Mac wouldn't boot to that partition after clearing it. It's easy enough. Just have any other partition with a bootable installation of OS X on it that has been tested to be sure you can indeed startup to it.
Then as before, move all preference files in the /Library/Preferences/ folder to a new folder. In this case, better to move them (or copy then delete the originals) to the other bootable drive so permission issues don't prevent you from getting at them when starting up to the other partition. Restart. Since they are preferences, and not critical system files, the Mac shouldn't have any trouble restarting. It should rebuild anything that's missing at default settings.
However, that's what the other bootable drive is for. It the Mac does balk at the removal of these preference files, then you restart and boot to the other partition. From there, copy the original preference files back into the /Library/Preferences/ folder of the drive you're testing.

Application cannot write to Library/Preferences

I have a Sling Box and have been having problems with the Sling Media Player not remembering it's preferences (i.e. directory and favorites not stored). I have gone round and round with the Sling Media support and they tell me the problem is with my Library/Preferences folder. Apparently my Mac is not letting the Sling Media Player application write to the folder. Has anybody ever heard of this sort of thing? If so, is there a way to fix it?
Thanks!

+chmod -N Preferences+ solved the problem - thank you! It is great to have my computer back.
Here were the wacky ACLs on the Preferences file:
drwx------+ 172 Robert Robert 5848 Aug 16 10:29 Preferences/
0: group:everyone deny addfile,delete,add_subdirectory,deletechild,writeattr,writeextattr,chown
1: group:everyone deny delete
All of my other computers have an ACL on the Preferences file but the ACL is:
drwx------+ 79 Robert Robert 2686 Aug 16 12:38 Preferences
0: group:everyone deny delete
I would love to know how the wacky ACL got there. Any ideas?
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Can't open Preferences folder, Finder crashes/relaunches

Every time I double-click the User/Library/Preferences folder to open it, the Finder crashes/relaunches and the folder won't open. I can click on the triangle to expand it, but I can't open it by double-clicking. I've tried rebuilding permissions but no help. Any ideas?

Open the Terminal app and type the following: *rm -r ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist*
Reboot the computer and give it a shot then

Strange, unreadable columns in username/library/preferences folder....?

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