Moving Mozilla profile from old PC to new PC

Have a new PC with Mozilla 1.7 installed. I have copied the old PC's Mozilla 1.6 profile. Have tried using the (delete .dat file and restart) but the new PC still recognises the default .slt file. How do I delete the default file so the .dat will reset...? Can I go in and rewrite the .dat file changing appropriate data ...?

 

You need to do things correctly, not the way you think that they work. This has caused endless time waste, and cussing. Ramona has an excellent page to answer your questions. http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/ns7pctopc.html

 

PC to PC

Thanks for your reply Westside .... I wasn't aware of the link you gave. I will try to do better next time ... !

 

Ramona ... OK, I have moved my profile twice following your instructions without success, each time removing Mozilla and re-installing. (Also, I have two xxxxxxxx.s files but only one xxxxxxxx.w file.) I have several accounts with the largest having five seperate pop.earthlink.net files. It appears the 5th file has the latest data but when Mozilla email is opened only old data can be seen. Now I have lost all my email in all the accounts. I have even done a restore and now when I boot it tells me I have 7 unread emails but unable to find them. I have tried retrieving email by using a backup "prefs.js ", no success. I'm just about ready to try my third Mozilla removal and install.

I moved my Mozilla 1.6 profile from a Dell laptop a new Compaq laptop with 1.7. Could moving from 1.6 to 1.7 have anything to do with my problems? I am desperate but determined to continue using Mozilla.

 

The link which I gave tells you how to do things correctly. But, for your information, you need to have one profile in the default location. Once you have that you can have a second profile anywhere you want. That .dat file should not be messed with, especially not going from pc to pc.
The directions which I gave are pretty much in three parts.
1.How to get things started in the new pc. This the first paragraph.
It may be a bit confusing that the second part relates to the old machine.
The third part deals on how to get your old files into the new profile.
I am very puzzled about what you did. And, I will list what bothers me:
You are talking about moving a profile. That applies only to moving a profile from the default location to a new location, within the same computer.
But, you are talking about desktop to laptop, and that is an entirely different story.
Also, using the prefsjs.bak file is not a good idea, unless you really know how to edit it. It is definitely not recommended.

 

Thanks for the reply but it really doesn't help. One thing you mentioned tweeked my vacuum, the abilty to have more than one profile. Good point and therein lies the answer to where all my email went ... Mail Account Settings must point to the correct profile. Now that I'm pointing to the correct profile things are back to a quasi normal, accept, I'm having trouble sorting which pop/mail belongs to which account. I have better things to do than play with that so deleting Mozill 1.7 and installing 1.6 on the new machine. One day I'll get around to updating to 1.7.1 again ...

To clear up some assumptions you made: I'm moving from laptop to laptop, and, I'm very familiar with editing files, etc., even prefs.js's. I see no reason not to tackle that edit as long as one follows Ramona's concise instructions.

 

summerdale,

Because you run Windows XP, you really do need to update your browser due to the Shell Protocol vulnerability. See this Article: What Mozilla users should know about the shell: protocol security issue. You can either apply the patch, or reinstall Mozilla 1.7.1. You gotta' figure out your Mail Accounts anyway...

BTW, moving from 1.6 to 1.7 had nothing to do with the problem you had. As you found out, the problem was that your "Local directory" path in the Server settings pointed to the wrong location for your Mail Account. Reinstalling Mozilla had absolutely no effect on your problem, as the problem was your Profile. This is almost always true.

If you have two password files (xxxxxxxx.s) open them in Notepad/WordPad, and see which one contains your passwords. Rename the one which doesn't.

Cheers!

Ramona

 

Ramona, thank you very much for your reply.

When I installed 1.7 I was informed about the patch and immediately updated to 1.7.1.

Both the xxxxxxxx.s files seem to have passwords (encrypted). The prefs.js on one machine calls out a different xxxxxxxx.s file than the new machine (???). Not sure how that happened. Guess I'll have to go back in and find my problem.

Happy to hear that profiles from 1.6 are compatible with 1.7.
Thanks again ...