Missing Profiles (again!)

I logged on to my Win XP computer this evening to find that Netscape 7.2 had "reset" itself to what it was like just after installation. (i.e. Netscape start page, none of our bookmarks, none of our 5 email accounts, none of our 5 profiles exist.) I've searched for possible solutions and tried what I've found in this BBS.
The only profile I can find under the ...MOZILLA\profiles folder is "default ". It appears that everything is gone. The same thing happened about 4 months ago. Please tell me all hope is not lost and that I'll have to set up all of our emails and bookmarks again. Thank you!

 

Welcome to the Forum Steve36US!

Steve,

Look here for your Profiles location: http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/ns7profloc.html

Your Profiles should be listed, unless you manually deleted them. Have you done a Windows "Find" for "bookmarks.html" or "abook.mab ", etc.?

Do you have a recent backup of your Profiles folder?

Ramona

 

Ramona,
I haven't backed up my profiles recently....or ever. I did a search and found bookmarks.html and abook.mab (one for each of our profiles). Now I'm lost! What can I do to restore Netscape to the way it was before this incident?

 

Steve,
I heard of profile problems, which were in the category of lost links to the hard drive files.
I am assuming that you don't have any version of Mozilla installed. Since you don't seem to be aware of any Profile with names of their own, you should first try to find what is in the default profile, again assuming that it is the only one you have. Use Ramona's directions, since Win XP hides its Application Data folders. After unhiding the folder, open it The default folder should have only one folder in it, with a combination of letters and numbers.slt. Double clicking that will show you what you have. If you find the full complement of mail folders and other files, you, probably lost the link. The simplest way to test it, is to right click on the desktop shortcut|Properties| add to the Target line, a keyboard space followed by "-p ". The line should look like ...netscp.exe" -p
You may or may not have a quotation mark. Do Apply, and Save, or whatever is needed. Then click on the shortcut. You should see the Profile Manager, and, at the default folder. If so, try to open it, using that profile. Tell us what you see. If nothing happens, I give up. Otherwise, you are ok. At this point, I would leave the Profile Manager to be available, and we will see later.
But if you see your files you could Create a new profile. You, probably need that anyway. But don't attempt anyway until we know what's going on.

 

Good news / Bad news

I found the *.slt folder and it appears to have our email profiles in it. (Good news.....I think). Next I tried the space -P thing and launched Netscape. The browser opened to http://home.netscape.com/. I don't see the Profile Manager. (Bad news). BTW I have Mozilla Firefox installed. I also tried opening the Profile Manager from start / programs and it opens and the default folder is in it. However our profiles aren't there.

 

Your case is the second one, today which has weird profile behavior. But, I am never sure what people mean, since they are using Profile and Accounts interchangeably, which is incorrect. If you had five profiles, you should have had five .slt folder, and each profile would have a different name, with the default profile on top, perhaps.
And, to carry this one further, did you have multiple profiles in Firefox, also?
Since there is no mail in Firefox, you could not have any such misunderstanding.
But, if you had one one profile with five mail accounts, in Netscape, you would be able to launch the program, by passing your Profile Manager, by adding one more space and then default to the shortcut properties. Or:
-p default. It should open Netscape, and you should have all your mail, address books and bookmarks.
By the way, the other fellow said that he had three extra profiles which he removed, but he still sees them, although there is nothing on the hard drive with the different names. I wonder....

 

No Luck Yet

I'm using a single profile in Firefox.
Adding a - p to the target DOESN'T work, neither does adding a - p default.
I have Win XP configured with 5 different user IDs.
Each user can use Netscape with their own bookmarks and settings.
Each user also has their own email "profile ".
I cannot find separate *.slt folders.
Does any of this help?

 

Steve,
there are times when hitting the head against the wall is more satisfying.
I am the one and only user in WinXP. In your case you should have five different folders like C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles, where the user_names would be different, and you would have different Application Data folder, etc., each one hidden, soooo....

 

Please forgive me for not knowing what you meant. I managed to limp along and get Netscape and its mail program working properly...for now.
Thank you and everyone else for the help you've given me!

 

Let us know if you have any further problems.
fp