Closed Bug 740373 Opened 12 years ago Closed 12 years ago

[ZoneAlarm (anti-virus)] SeaMonkey fails to start, with "XULRunner : Couldn't read application.ini" error

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: Installer, defect)

SeaMonkey 2.8 Branch
x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED INVALID

People

(Reporter: artist, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2
Build ID: 20120215223356

Steps to reproduce:

SeaMonkey automatically upgraded to 2.8. All attempts to run SeaMonkey after that failed.


Actual results:

I got an error message box:
"Couldn't read application.ini"
in a message box with "XULRunner" in the title bar. When the OK button was clicked on SeaMonkey did not start.

I tried completely uninstalling SeaMonkey and installing it again from a freshly downloaded installation file. The problem remained. SeaMonkey will not run.

I did a recursive search for the file "application.ini" from the root C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey which failed to get any hits.

My OS is Windows XP.


Expected results:

The SeaMonkey application window should have opened.
You're using the .exe installer?
Where did you download it from?

If download & extract the ZIP version instead, does that run?


Start the installer.
When it gets to the initial screen, "Welcome to the SeaMonkey Setup Wizard", stop.

Open %TMP%.
Within, you'll find some subdirectories.
One, most likely the most recent or so, will contain the SeaMonkey setup files.
You should see "setup.exe", & then a subdirectory named, "core".

Open /core/.
Do you see the file "application.ini"?

Proceed through the installation, but stop at the last screen where it says, "SeaMonkey has been installed on your computer." along with the Finish button.

Revisit /core/.
Application.ini still there?

Now look in your selected installation directory.
Application.ini there too?

Now click Finish.

Revisit those two locations again.
The %TMP% directories should now be gone.
Application.ini [i]should[/i] still be in the installation directory.

Is it?

If not, manually copy what is withing the === lines below, pasting it into a text file, naming it application.ini.  Then copy application.ini into your SeaMonkey installation directory.  See if SeaMonkey runs.
=======
[App]
Vendor=Mozilla
Name=SeaMonkey
Version=2.8
BuildID=20120312220748
SourceRepository=http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-release
SourceStamp=a43f913afae4
ID={92650c4d-4b8e-4d2a-b7eb-24ecf4f6b63a}

[Gecko]
MinVersion=11.0
MaxVersion=11.0

[XRE]
EnableProfileMigrator=1
EnableExtensionManager=1

[Crash Reporter]
Enabled=1
ServerURL=https://crash-reports.mozilla.com/submit
=======

If this works, it is only a work-around & does nothing to solve the source of your problem.

(My only guess is that something, anti-virus or whatnot, for whatever reason is not liking "application.ini" & is deleting it somewhere along the line?)
Related bug?
Bug 437349 - updater.exe lacks elevation manifest and fails to start when installer detection is disabled
Then we have to ask, are you running XP in a Limited user account?
Assignee: nobody → installer
Severity: normal → major
Component: General → Installer
QA Contact: general → xpi-packages
Summary: XULRunner Couldn't read application.ini → SeaMonkey fails to start, with "XULRunner : Couldn't read application.ini" error
> Component: General → Installer
Serge: it might be a problem with the updater code and not the static installer.
The installation files I used were downloaded from:
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/
This was for SeaMonkey 2.8

I looked up the variable %TMP% directory by going to:
Start > Control Panel > System 
and in the "Advanced" tab clicked on the "Environmental Variables" button. There I looked up TMP for the username I was logged in as.  

I then ran "SeaMonkey Setup 2.8.exe". After the program extracted its installation the files and the Installation Wizard window opened I found application.ini among them in the directory %TMP%\7zSB7.tmp\core

I proceeded with the installation by clicking Next in the Installation Wizard window. I chose a Standard installation. When the "Completing the SeaMonkey Setup Wizard" window opened I found application.ini in the C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey directory. I made a copy of this file. When I clicked on the Finish button in the "Completing the SeaMonkey Setup Wizard" window the application.ini file disappeared from the C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey directory, along with several other files. When I restored application.ini from the copy I had made SeaMonkey ran normally.

I have to conclude there is a bug in the SeaMonkey Setup Wizard that deletes application.ini in error.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
This is not yet fully resolved. All my email accounts and addresses in the address book are missing.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: WORKSFORME → ---
> Then we have to ask, are you running XP in a Limited user account?
(In reply to Stephen from comment #5)
> I have to conclude there is a bug in the SeaMonkey Setup Wizard that deletes
> application.ini in error.

Afaict, there is no code (anywhere) to delete application.ini.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/search?string=application.ini&case=on&find=%2Finstaller%2F
Depends on: 691223
This installation was done from a Windows XP administrator account.

But whether or not it was it is evident the installation program had the authority to do the installation and create application.ini and then delete it when Finish is clicked on.

I am not the only one who is experiencing this problem:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mozilla.seamonkey.user/33327

Something is deleting application.ini along with several other files from the installation in C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey. I do not know if those other files are supposed to be deleted. It appears application.ini is grouped with them for deletion.
> But whether or not it was it is evident the installation program had the authority to
> do the installation and create application.ini and then delete it when Finish is
> clicked on.
It may have the authority to delete application.ini but as Serge says there is nothing in our code that deletes it.

OK. Wild guesses time:
Is your antivirus software inappropriately deleting these files?
When Windows is started in safe mode does installation succeed without those files being deleted?

When you say:
> This installation was done from a Windows XP administrator account.
Does this mean you used an account with administrator privileges or the actual XP administrator account? I remember that there are some subtle differences.
I'm not certain, but on XP, I would venture that there is nary a difference between an administrative account & the account Administrator.

(Windows 7 would be different in that respect, but still would not think it to be material in respect to this issue.)

I tried a "Limited*" account in (Win7) "XP Mode" (VM) & was able to install 2.7.2 & then further upgrade to 2.8 without issue.

*** "Limited".  In XP Mode, while you can set an account as Limited, you cannot actually log into it.  So the best (& not sure it was "correct") I could do was to create an Admin account, set that as Limited, then do the installs from there.  That worked.  But in any case, the OP was running under an Admin account, under XP, so looking at the Limited side of things looks to be immaterial at this point.

---

Perhaps Process Monitor could be used to track the install, indenting what is deleting application.ini.

"Process Monitor"
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
The account used for the installation was an administrative account with unlimited privileges. 

The firewall and anti-virus program is ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. My experience with it is it would open a dialog to ask me before deleting the file.

I will use the Process Monitor therube linked to and post the result here.
Did you try disabling the anti-virus part for a while?
Do you reproduce with Firefox (10->11 upgrade or 11 installer)? (Or with Thunderbird?)
The Process Monitor failed to start. It displayed the error message:

"Process Monitor was unable to allocate sufficient memory to run. Try increasing your page file."

Shutting down Zone Alarm did not change this. The Task Manager showed a 512MB page file that was mostly empty, as indicated by the green bars in the bar graph display.

After taking my computer off line I shutdown Zone Alarm. I then did an installation of SeaMonkey. This time application.ini did not get deleted, nor was anything else from that directory. And unlike before, the SeaMonkey's Profile Manager appeared in the Start menu. SeaMonkey ran without having to restore application.ini.

So it appears it was Zone Alarm after all.

Zone Alarm did not interfere with the Firefox installation. That remained functional after its upgrade in spite of Zone Alarm running. I do not use Thunderbird. I use SeaMonkey for email.
(In reply to Stephen from comment #12)
> The firewall and anti-virus program is ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. My
> experience with it is it would open a dialog to ask me before deleting the
> file.

(In reply to Stephen from comment #14)
> So it appears it was Zone Alarm after all.
> 
> Zone Alarm did not interfere with the Firefox installation. That remained
> functional after its upgrade in spite of Zone Alarm running.

I guess the firewall part is fine and it's the anti-virus part that interferes.
Ftr, which version of ZA are you using, with which data files, ...?

You should contact Check Point to investigated why ZA doesn't like SeaMonkey and why it doesn't let you know about it.

R.Invalid, wrt SeaMonkey,
unless you (or they) could tell us what SeaMonkey would be doing wrong.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago12 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Summary: SeaMonkey fails to start, with "XULRunner : Couldn't read application.ini" error → [ZoneAlarm (anti-virus)] SeaMonkey fails to start, with "XULRunner : Couldn't read application.ini" error
ZoneAlarm Version:

ZoneAlarm Extreme Security version: 10.1.079.000
vsmon version: 10.1.079.000
Driver version: 10.1.079.000
Anti-virus engine version: 8.1.8.79
Anti-virus signature DAT file version: 1082601952
AntiSpam version: 6.3.1.4971
ZoneAlarm Browser Security: 1.5.350.0
ZoneAlarm ForceField Spyware Scanner: 1.5.350.0
ZoneAlarm ForceField Anti-Phishing Database: 1.2.104.0
ZoneAlarm ForceField Spyware Sites Database: 04.155

I will report this as a bug. Anything I learn I will post here.
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