To make a long story short: if you’re using Snow Leopard, you have probably noticed that Spotlight search doesn’t show every file on your disk. For example, when you search for a preference file, library or other system files, nothing shows up in results. The good news is that all these files have in fact been indexed, they are just excluded from showing up in the results.
To include these (system) files in the results:
1. Invoke a Spotlight search window (not the Spotlight menubar search), default key combo is Cmd-Alt-Space.
2. Click (+) and select “Other…”,
3. Add “System files” from the selection to the menu (checkbox) and then
4. select to include System files in the search:
Then do a search for your preference files, bundles, etc.
Cheers.
(thanks to this article from Tidbits)
