For future reference there is a key combination that lets you grab any offscreen dialog and move it into view.
So with the focus on Preferences (in other words you have tried to open it and the machine is going bing) press alt and spacebar together, then tap m once (where m is move in your language, would be d in french for example) then tap any arrow key and without clicking move the mouse around until the Dialog appears on screen.
Once you have Preferences you can use the Reset Workspace button which should bring all dialogs back to the screen.

Thanks for the quick response. Much appreciated. Will have to convert the imperial data into corresponding Metric then....

I tend to not save shadow settings with my "camera" scenes. So when I got from scene to scene, it leaves the shadows how I have them set at that moment. Then I have a couple of scenes that just change the shadow settings, but not camera locations. So I can go from scene in whatever shadow mode I have set. And just click a "Shadow" scene to change from morning sun to afternoon sun, to no sun, etc.

And its easy to change the settings on multiple scenes at a time. Use the scene manager and select multiple scenes using the shift or ctrl key. Then deslect the shadowsetting and it will deselect it on all selected scenes. Or if you want to just change the current shadows setting on all scenes, then adjust the shadows how you want it, then select all desired scenes, and click update and in the pop up window, select ONLY shadow settings and it will update just the shadows settings of all selected scenes.

Scenes are incredibly useful for model management like this. I could do a quick video if my explanation was confusing.

Chris

I also have a similar example (for another help forum topic) in the 3D Warehouse:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=779b98e58f0afd42cb6ac4bba1570c24