On Jan 25, 2011, at 09:41:20, Geoffrey Kloster wrote:
> Makes me wonder if there's something lurking that carried over from my old
> Mac that is slowly eating my pref files.
It wouldn't be carried over from your Mac, but a corrupted volume or flaky
drive could cause this. Run Disk Utility's Disk First Aid, run DiskWarrior if
you have it, and run SMART Utility (the last will tell you about drive hardware
problems).
Also, set up Time Machine, if you haven't already. If you don't have an
external drive to back up to, Target has a 1 TB drive for stunningly cheap ($85
USD):
http://www.target.com/Seagate-External-Desktop-Drive-ST310005EXA101-RK/dp/B001UI49XA
With Time Machine set up, you can roll back any file to an older version
(including preferences files, once you narrow down to a culprit), and if you
end up replacing your internal hard drive, you can wipe it beforehand and then
restore your stuff onto the new hard drive after the transplant.
> When I've asked this question among knowledgeable folks all say probably not,
> the pref files are problematic by themselves.
I disagree. A file format is not inherently conducive or resistant to
corruption. It's all in how the application writes out its preference files,
and most use NSUserDefaults.
If this were a problem in NSUserDefaults, (1) every app that uses it (which is
nearly every app) would have corrupted preferences sooner or later, and (2) the
problem would affect everybody. Not some, not even most, *everybody*.
So, I say the problem is on your own system, and probably either the file
system (DFA/DW will reveal and fix such problems) or the drive itself (SMART
Utility will report the drive's self-diagnosis).
> Also interesting, the USB thumb drive and the printer work just fine.
I'd suggest taking another look in the System Profiler, then. Every USB device
that your Mac knows about will show up in the proper section in the
Profiler—and you *cannot* mount or print to a USB device that the Mac doesn't
know about.
Also, you didn't explicitly say the printer is USB. If it's not, it won't show
up under USB. (One might think this tautological, but then you might not expect
the built-in Bluetooth radio to show up under USB, and yet it does. Presumably,
it is actually USB and is plugged into an internal port.) A printer that your
Mac talks to over the network (via wired or wireless Ethernet) will not show up
under USB.
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