155017 - Set Home Page Gets Reset To Default

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 95331

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect)

Description

[Mike]

After anywhere from 1hr. to 48hr. period, Mozilla 1.0 resets home page
preference setting to default setting, which was present on initial
installation. Bookmarks remain intact, however all mail account settings
(including all Emails) are also deleted. Will send seperate report under that
heading.
Also worth noting: This identical problem occurred, when using Netscape 6,
however it has never been an issue with Netscape 4.78.
Hope This Helps, Mike.

Comment 1

[Colin Cashman]

I've also seen this bug -- it's driving me nuts.

What happens is that the app suddenly "forgets" about a) preferences, and b)
mail settings. All of the mail settings are still there, and "all" you need to
do to restore them is to rename the folders under 'Application
Data\Mozilla\Profiles\Default\foo\Mail', create new accounts with the same name
as the old ones, delete the new Explorer folders, and rename the old ones back
to their original names. Upon restart, Mozilla sees the folders again. The
preferences, of course, you can just reset.

I've also noticed that the Mozilla icon in the taskbar seems to disappear for a
second when you close a browser window, and then reappears. Based on
observation, it appears that the preferences/mail settings are getting hosed
after a browser and/or mail window is closed and the icon is "reset." (I don't
know this for sure; I can have a mail window open for an hour, close it,
immediately relaunch it, and bang - mail is gone.)

As Mike noted, the bookmarks remain intact, so Mozilla obviously knows where to
find the bookmarks file. Speculation: maybe Mozilla is somehow corrupting the
preferences and mail settings data when a window is closed (and that taskbar
icon resets)?

Comment 2

[Colin Cashman]

As extra information:

Tonight I uninstalled the version of Mozilla I had running (which also exhibited
the problem, and was a nightly from several days ago), rebooted after the
uninstall successfully completed, erased the mozilla.org directory, and then
reinstalled the following nightly:

mozilla-win32-installer-sea.exe            11-Jul-2002 18:54  10.3M  

Shortly thereafter, Mozilla took down my prefs and mail settings.

Comment 3

[Steve Clark]

I had this as well in 1.1b.

Mozilla seems to be creating new default prefs.js. After
reading bug 134676 I created a user.js that contained a copy of 
settings from prefs.js and the problem has not returned.

All non-default user prefs are affected:
"browser.search.defaultengine"
"browser.startup.homepage"
"security.warn"
"mail.server..."
etc.

Comment 4

[Mike]

I may have found the source of this problem.
Having had Netscape 4.78 previously installed on my PC, and just having 
upgraded to Netscape 7, I noticed a warning that I could not use the 
same "profile" as my prior version of NS, or this very problem would occur.
I tried deleting the old profile, using a new one... nothing worked.
Finally, after deleting the old profile w/NS4.7, I installed and booted NS7 
with not only a different profile, but also with a previously unused Email 
account. Apparently Messenger was interpreting my old Email account info, as a 
profile.
Hope this helps explain the problem... although I wouldn't consider it a fix.
I still feel the install should take care of this.

Comment 5

[Mike]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 95331 ***

Comment 6

[Grace Bush]

this has many similarities to bug 155080 and bug 147822

Comment 7

[Grace Bush]

Mike (and other commenters),

Please look at the other bugs in comment above and see if they pertain to what
you are seeing.
thanks

Comment 8

[Mike]

You're right, Grace... it seems as though bugs# 147822 and 132517 are 
addressing the same issues as this, and bug# 95331.
The GOOD news, is that I think I've solved the mystery... which I added into 
the replies on # 95531.
The problem is, the prefs.js file needs to be changed to a read-only file, when 
the preferences window isn't open, and in use. Somebody needs to write a 
program that will do this (I don't know how).
I set my preferences, closed Mozilla, changed prefs.js to read-only (manually), 
and haven't suffered dataloss since. Of course, now I can't change preferences, 
clear the cache, etc... unless I "unlock" the file manually, either... and then 
lock it again. And there's always the risk of dataloss again, because when 
Mozilla shuts down, it could rewrite the prefs file, before I have a chance to 
switch it back to read-only.
Hope This Helps, Mike.

Comment 9

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

mass-verification of Duplicates.

mail search string for bugspam: SolarFlaresAreTheCause