Apple Networking Issue

Factual Questions
1

I recently updated via the automatic ‘software update’ in OS X. As a result of this (I am 90 % sure it happened at the same time) I lost the ability to access networked drives on my other machines (they run XP). That is to say, if I goto Finder --> Go --> Network nothing shows up. My network is working just fine, and as a temporary work-around to the issue, all I had to do was create a 2nd OS X account and voila, my networked drives were immediately accessable again. So my question is how can I reset my primary account to default settings so that I can once again access files stored on other machines.

Or alternatively, what could be wrong with my account thats stopping me from seeing/accessing networked folders?

2

SOLVED! I located my preferences folder in USER/Library/Preferences and deleted everything. It took about 3 minutes to recreate my settings (i.e. how i like my dock, mouse scroll speed etc) but totally fixed my issue. I would recomend this solution to anyone who doesn’t used OS X Mail, as e-mails are also stored in that folder (and so you would need to export/backup your mail prior to taking this action).

This thread can now be buried.