289773 - Installed Metropipe, now won't keep the connection settings regarding proxy or home pages

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 274844

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[paul2004]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2

I installed Metropipe tunneler -- an anonymization software. It changed
Firefox's connecttion settings to 'manual proxy' with 127.0.0.0 and it's own
port.  Metropipe tunneler, however, was garbage and crashed all the time so I
uninstalled it, and went to "Tools", "Options", "Connection Settings", and
changed back to "Direct connection". Firefox works.

But each time I open a new firefox session, it goes back to those Metropipe
manual proxy settings and I have to change it back to "Direct connection" each
time. I even uninstalled firefox completely, and re-installed the latest version
from scratch. And, @#@!!@# the connection settings are still pointing back to
'manual proxy', and, like before, changing it to 'direct connection' won't stick.

Metropipe must have written something into a registry setting somewhere that
survived an uninstall of Metropipe, and an uninstall/reinstall of Firefox. But
whatever it did, seems to be permanent in Firefox.  The same is true with the
start page, which Metropipe changed to start.metropipe.net.

It does not seem to be a memory resident application--I checked the process list
and there is nothing there unusual.  And it's not a startup script or
service--again, nothing there, and I completely uninstalled Metropipe.  It is
also not that they modified the shortcut to Firefox--I already uninstalled and
reinstalled Firefox.

When I start Firefox from the 'start' menu, then change the connection settings
back to 'direct', if I open a new Firefox window by clicking a link with 'open
in new window', then it's ok--the new window has the correct connection
settings.  But, if I start a new Firefox instance by selecting Firefox from the
start menu, the new session always reverts to the wrong settings, even if I
leave other Firefox instances running with the corrected settings.

I'm reporting this as a bug to Firefox because, although metropipe initiated it,
Metropipe is now completely removed, and Firefox is not saving it's settings in
the registry, or wherever it's supposed to save them.  Metropipe did the same
thing to IE.  But in IE, when I changed the home page and connection settings
back, IE is ok--the changes stick.

Any ideas why t Firefox doesn't save and keep the settings?



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Install Metropipe Tunneler at metropipe.net, and run it, choose connect
2.  Confirm the connection settings in Firefox were changed
3.  Remove Metropipe Tunneler, and try to change Firefox's settings back

Actual Results:  
Firefox won't keep the settings I put in.

Expected Results:  
Should keep my settings.

Comment 1

[u63580]

Have you tried a clean profile?

Comment 2

[paul2004]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Have you tried a clean profile?

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by profile.  I went into Firefox's help and
searched for "profile", but it's not there.  I'm just changing the connection
settings under Tools, Options.  I did uninstall and then reinstall Firefox,
though, but this problem persisted.  i.e., after a clean install of Firefox the
start page is still metropipe, and the proxy settings still point to the
tunneler software.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

see the discussion in bug 274844

Reporter, your profile is stored in C:\Documents and
Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox . Reinstalling Firefox
doesn't help - the profile is not uninstalled, so all the settings are kept. The
settings are normally kept in prefs.js (editted by the dialogs) and user.js
(file normally not present, but overrides prefs.js).

I guess that Metropipe overwrote your settings in user.js, but never uninstalled
them.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 274844 ***