206805 - Uninstall Mozilla leaves files and data under \mozilla.org\mozilla\profiles

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, defect)

Description

[James V. Stewart]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030509
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030509

When I install Mozilla the first time it asks if I want it to "Convert Profile"
which goes out and extracts my Netscape 4.61 bookmarks and mail databases. If I
uninstall mozilla with the Icon and then reinstall mozilla it does not pick up
the netscape 4.61 stuff again because the uninstall process was incomplete and
left stuff under \mozilla.org\mozilla\registry.dat and \profiles\----

If I completely remove the \mozilla.org directory then mozuilla workes as
expected  on the next install and on startup goes out and checks netscape 4.61

This may be "working to design" but it was not obvious to me for several reasons:
1. I would have expected the removal process to be complete!
2. If the removal is not complete it would be nice if I were told.
3. If the leftover files are retained for the anticipated install of a newer
mozilla version it would still be good if I were told this stuff was not removed. 

The reason that the Netscape 4.61 data is important to me is that it is my
production browser, after all the mozilla 4.1b version is beta at this point. I
do like it very much!!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

There are reasons why this files are not deleted.

Profiles = I don't want to loose my mails if i upgrade my browser
(uninstall, reinstall)

And the registry.dat is not removed because installed addons would not work in
your new build if you remove this files.

You can manually start a profile import if you run "mozilla -profilemanager",
remove the existing Mozilla Profile and reimport the Netscape 4.X profile.
(the profile with the green icon)

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

This is totally working as designed. We would never want to uninstall your 
profile information.

I think the uninstall should say something about leaving your profile 
information behind though.

I'm making this all and copying the install folk.

Maybe at the end of the installer it should say "profiles were not deleted"

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

forgot to reassign

Comment 4

[Sean Su]

yep. as designed.  If you want to make sure that mozilla is fully uninstalled
(along with your profiles), you should write a script that deletes the profile
dir before installing mozilla.

However, you need to keep in mind that deleting the profiles directory will have
you lose all the bookmarks, certs, plugins, mail, prefs, etc... that you had set
in mozilla.

It seems like the problem you're trying to solve is:
 * keep 4.x installed
 * have mozilla installed and upgraded often
 * keep mozilla profiles in "sync" with 4.x profiles (not the other way around)

I don't believe that we have anything that can help with that.  We try to always
have people migrate their profile once to the newest builds of the product.

FYI: I think the only way to have mozilla show the green arrow indicating a
profile that can be migrated is to do: mozilla.exe -installer

> I think the uninstall should say something about leaving your profile
> information behind though.

There might already be a bug open on this, if not, please open a new bug

Closing bug as invalid.

Comment 5

[Grace Bush]

v