434123 - "Remove my Firefox personal data and customizations" removes more than what a user might expect to be deleted

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[the-edmeister]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008051506 Minefield/3.0pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008051506 Minefield/3.0pre

When a user decides to uninstall a Firefox 3.0 installation they are given the option to "Remove my Firefox personal data and customizations". That option deletes more than Firefox 3.0 data, it deletes the \Mozilla\ folder in \Application Data\ which might contain Firefox 2.0 Profiles and SeaMonkey Profiles. I understand that the mere existence of a Profile in Firefox is a closely guarded secret and that the mere "home-user" doesn't need to be aware of having a Profile, and that the consideration of users who might want to have multiple versions of Firefox installed isn't a major concern of the development team, but what about users who might want to have both SeaMonkey and Firefox 3.0 installed at the same time? That preference says nothing about SeaMonkey data being wiped out in the process of uninstalling Firefox 3.0.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Uninstall Firefox 3.0pre. 
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
The \Mozilla\ folder deleted along with the \Firefox\ folder and the SeaMonkey Profiles folder.

Expected Results:  
Delete only the "data and customizations" directly associated with the program being uninstalled.


At this point that preference should be removed completely from the uninstaller dialog window.

Comment 1

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Serge, did you actually try the steps to reproduce? We only remove empty directories above the relative Firefox profile directories and my SeaMonkey profiles were left alone.

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

oops... I mean Ed.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Adding qawanted in the hope someone tries to reproduce this quickly since 3.0 is soon to be released. I am unable to reproduce this using several different scenarios including those in the steps to reproduce. We also only delete empty directories so this should not be happening.

Comment 4

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

rob: i take a look and try to reproduce

Comment 5

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Using Win XP and the latest Minefield nightly I was not able to reproduce this issue. My existing Seamonkey profile was fine after uninstalling.

Comment 6

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

i was not able to reproduce this on Vista and also on a Windows 2000 SP4 Test installation. 

In both cases was the SeaMonkey Profile and also the \mozilla\ folder still there after uninstall of Firefox 3 RC1 and also the SeaMonkey Profile itself was working fine.

 

Comment 7

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Thanks Marcia and Tomcat!

Ed, can you check your steps to reproduce and post back? Thanks

Comment 8

[the-edmeister]

I didn't have SeaMonkey installed when I uninstalled 3.0RC1 originally, I based my conclusion upon the loss of the folder above profiles.ini - namely the \Mozilla\ folder. When SeaMonkey is installed the 3.0 uninstaller does not delete the \Mozilla\ folder as I experienced, and incorrectly surmised. This time the \Firefox\ folder was removed, along with the 2.0 Profile, the 3.0RC1 Profile, and profiles.ini file.

Comment 9

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

This option will only remove empty directories directories under and including %APPDATA%\Mozilla so resolving -> invalid since the original report is bogus. It could be debated whether or not it should remove empty directories but I doubt that behavior would get much support.

Comment 10

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Removing dataloss keyword since there was no dataloss experienced