Corrupted Preferences files

pedz

pedz

Registered
In the past, an application's preferences file would get corrupted and the fix was to trash the file and start over. I thought that this was one of the weakest points on Mac OS X. They needed a more bullet proof way for applications to update their preference files.

I've noticed that I have not had to trash a preference file in 10.6. I can't remember trashing a preference file in 10.5 even. Did Apple make a change so that the updates are atomic and recoverable from a crash?

Have others noticed that we no longer need to trash preference files as often as we use to?
 
Well it really depends. The preferences can corrupted bad either bad programming, depends on the program that go past the design, a hard drive in an old Hollywood film death throughs, PPC code in 10.6, etc.

Just once in a while Running Disk Permissions Repairs with /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility on your startup drive can help in reducing permissions going corrupt.
 
Yes, in Snow Leopard (and perhaps in Leopard as well), when an application crashes, you are presented with a dialog box that asks you whether you want to relaunch the app and a couple of other options.

One option simply allows the app to die gracefully, at which point you can simply launch it again with the original preference file.

Another option automatically relaunches the app for you and creates a new preference file.

So yes, Apple did do "something" to alleviate the user having to manually delete a preference file themselves.
 
Now I am eating crow! Just after posting my last message in this thread my Mail applications started freaking out. I was open the Mail application and then heard an audible click and both my email accounts just disappeared, even though the accounts were still in Mail's Preferences. Luckily I had a Time Machine backup and got an older Mail preferences (/Users/MyUserAccount/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist) and restored Mail back to normal.

So fate does have a sense of humor! :o
 
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