This is why I am confused. I was thinking possibly the 3DS plugin was maybe messing with the preferences. I did everything correctly (I have done many UV snapshots with Maya thus far) but it just recently started doing this. I gave it a file name, tried adding the extension (.png/.tiff/etc), selected image format, changed file location, etc etc basically tried to alter every possible thing I could. I think maybe it was the .ma itself being glitchy? I haven't tried a snapshot with another file yet though.i am not really sure what the 3ds plugin has to do with UV snapshot, what file type are you saving the snapshot as ?
A Uv snapshot is just an image file of your objects uv layout so you need to select an image format i.e jpg,tiff,targa ect
You should not need to delete the preferences every time because if deleting the preferences solves the issue Maya would be using the new preference file it created henceforth.