Originally Posted By: ryck
Note: In the Preferences folder there are some peculiarly-named folders, all of which are empty.

$¨w‰è“c
4ó‰èrb
ϧ‰èrb (3 of these)
îë‰èrb (2 of these)
ú¨‰èrb (3 of these)

I mention these in case they are a source of odd behaviour.

That is hard drive directory corruption. Run disk utility and verify the disk. There may be actual data damage that cannot be repaired without a reinstall.

Quote:
I routinely delte stuff like that. An empty folder, in particular, with a name like that is most likely a meaningless artifact.

That's kinda scary!

I work for the Department of Redundancy Department