104816 - Deletion of non-mozilla files on deleting a profile

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Gordon Wassermann]

On my PC at home (not the one I am writing this from) I installed Mozilla build
0.9.5 yesterday morning Oct. 14, in the hope of being able to recreate a mail
account which was no longer accessible from Netscape 6.1 (I uninstalled Netscape
6.1 before installing Mozilla).  When my standard profile refused to let me type
in a proper mailhost address, I tried creating a new profile, pointing to a new
directory on my drive E:, which I reserve for personal files, into which I
COPIED my mail files.  After ascertaining that the account was now recognized
but no messages were readable, I deleted the new profile and unfortunately all
files associated with it, since these were only copies of my originals.

This morning I tried to access my Star Office files (i.e. the files I had
created with Star Office, located in another directory tree on drive E:) and
discovered they were all gone.  I run Norton Utilities 2002 on my computer and
the Norton protected recycle bin told me that these files had been deleted by
Mozilla at 2:03 am October 15, precisely the moment that I deleted my test
profile and associated files.

I can get my Star Office files back since I fortunately have backups, but this
is an extremely serious error.  The only connection at all that I can see
between mozilla and Star Office is that during yesterday afternoon I stored two
Web pages in the Star Office directory, but using IE 6 since the server they
were from does not interact correctly with Netscape 6.  I do not use Star Office
for mail or as a browser (except for a Japanese dictionary page last accessed
Oct. 13), so I have no idea why the profile manager picked on this directory for
deletion.  All other deleted files seem to be mozilla files, if the Norton
Protection data is a reliable guide.

Please note:  this really is a mozilla bug report, although I am submitting it
from another computer under a different operating system and with Netscape 6. 
The correct browser version is the mozilla 0.9.5 build downloadable October 14
for Windows 98, the US version.

Comment 1

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

When you delete a profile and choose to delete the files as well, the only
directory which  gets deleted is the profile directory (the one which is a
random string ending in .slt) and, if that is the one and only thing in the
parent dir (the one with the name of the profile) the parent is deleted. When
the dialog appears which asks whether you want to delete the files as well, it
has the path of the directory which is going to be deleted. Can you repeat this,
verify the path to the deleted directory, and then choose cancel? If the
directory shown in the dialog is not what it should be, can you attach  your
profile registry to this bug?

Comment 2

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

Reporter:  Can you give us a reproducible, step-by-step testcase?  If we are
unable to reproduce this dataloss bug, we will have to mark it invalid within a
week.  :)

Comment 3

[Mike Schuette]

I'm going to have to mark this as invalid since it's been idle for so long. 
Note that this does not mean that the error did not happen or does not exist,
only that we haven't been able to attain enough information to reproduce it.

Reporter, if you can take the time to follow the procedures mentioned in comment
#1, we might have something to work with.  Feel free to reopen this bug and
comment upon it if you do this. 

Comment 4

[K'Trina Medina]

Marking verified. Reporter, please reopen with step-by-step testcase if problem
still occurs.