197521 - Opened mozilla, saw an error, all configuration settings were lost

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 132517

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Peter]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030210
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030210

I opened mozilla and it gave me an error, something about an illegal character
found. I will write it down if it happens again, but i didn't then.

afterwards, ALL config changes were lost... bookmarks, home page, security
settings, etc.

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load mozilla

Actual Results:  
this is the 2nd time that my configuration settings dissapeared, but i didn't
see the message before.

Expected Results:  
it should not have forgotten my settings & bookmarks.

tell me how to get a stack trace and i'll get one. 
i won't close this browser window and i'll check back tomorrow for the instructions.

Comment 1

[beanladen]

This is dataloss and should be CRITICAL.

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

Are the files gone from disk as such? This could be a syntax error in prefs.js.
(Mozilla has a bug that prevents it from reading prefs.js beyond a syntax error,
so all settings mentioned after an error will appear as "lost" to the user. It
does not affect files as such.

Please check in you have a preferences backup file there (prefs.bac or bak)
Preserve that file if it exists, *before* you start Mozilla again.
Unless you have set prefs for it, there will only be one backup file and it will
get overwritten on next startup.)

Then restart. Please add the exact error message here.

Comment 3

[Peter]

i found this at the end of my prefs file:

 G¹&µ±±±±µ'µ'¹H½hÁ‰ÅìÑ.Þoæ�ê±ò±ò±î±ò±î±ò±ò±î±ò±ò±ò±ò±ò±ò±ò±

Comment 4

[Peter]

I found the prefs.bak and put in place of the prefs.js.
After that, i didn't notice any changes. By bookmarks are still gone, and my
homepage is set wrong.

Comment 5

[Peter]

I restarted and nothing happened. I did not see the error message.

Comment 6

[R.K.Aa.]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 132517 ***