448181 - Installation with UAC-uped Admin rights leads to "missing profiles"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 404609

(Thunderbird :: Installer, defect)

Description

[Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE]]

Today I installed a Shredder 3.0a2pre build (20080726) in Windows Vista. Using my normal user account in Vista the UAC dialog requested to enter my admin accounts password. The Shredder installation finished with success. So far so good.

The installers last dialog box has an option to start the application direct/automatic after closing the last installers dialog box. Using this option leads Shredder/Thunderbird to be started with the UAC uped admin user rights and the !!! admin user profile directory !!! instead of my normal users profile directory, which would be correct and I was expecting. Because of this it seemed as all my profiles would be lost (my Windows Vista admin account has no Thunderbird profiles). After the first shock, I've closed Shredder/Thunderbird. And opened Shredder the normal way using the Shredder icon. Doing this, Shredder opened as expected with the profile dialog and my profiles are all still existing and okay.

After this, I had a look in C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles and I can see, there is a new/first profile created for the admin account with  appropriate date/time from the shocking moment.

So, if first time users install Thunderbird and create mail accounts and more running Thunderbird the first time, this would be done in the admin accounts profile directory instead of the correct users account. Opening Thunderbird the 2nd time, would show them lost profiles / data loss, because of now (correct) used user profile directory.

Maybe the same behaviour in Firefox and Seamonkey?

Comment 1

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

This is actually two bugs.

First, Bug 404609 will prevent the UAC from automatically requesting credentials which will make it so you aren't running as a different user when launching the first time. It is important to note that many installers on Vista do not provide a launch after install to prevent exactly this problem.

Second, we do want to provide the ability to run the installer with the UAC asking for credentials to install (the current solution is to only prompt with the UAC when the user is a member of the admin group) which is bug 404541