Resolved Can't move SeaMonkey Profile

Hi all,

I'm having the devil's own time trying to move my (SM2.5) Profile to my D\ partition. I did it easily with SM 1.x, but 2.5 is challenging me.

I went to the Mozilla\Move Profile site and wrote everything down, followed directions, but it still won't move. When I click to use my new profile, I get a "just installed" interface, i.e., no bookmarks, etc., and only the .default works. Plus, I've got double Logons and Passwords!

So, I renamed the "xxxxxxxx.default" to jpChris and guess what? I can't find jpChris anywhere. Alls I can find is the above .default profile.

So, what am I doing wrong? The profile is in: C:\D&S\Adm\AppData\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles. The whole Mozilla folder is over 610MB.

 

I don't have any partitions, so I can't test the case, but should you not be able to copy/paste the contents of your C drive profile to the D drive. I don't believe that you can, arbitrarily rename the profile. When you say that you can't find your jpChris profile, are talking about the D drive, or all drives? In other words is your profile anywhere, or is it gone?

 

All drives & partitions: It's nowhere. And, when I close SM, the newly created profile disappears leaving me with double, triple and quadruple user Login Names and Passwords for the same site!

Even when I renamed the .default profile to "jpChris ", it's nowhere to be found either. The only Profile I have (or ever had) is the xxxxxxx.default profile no matter what I do.

 

I don't know what the rules are, but, ever since I started working with any type of profile, in the Netscape days, I had read that renaming should not be done, because the profiles belong in a specific folder in App.Data. However, new profiles can be created using the Profile Manager, because this allows you to select the name of the profile, and its location. It should work going to all programs/Seamonkey/Profile Manager.
My Seamonkey is open, and I will try the trick with Seamonkey closed (there is no response with Seamonkey open). As you, probably, know, the profile folders have two elements. One is a unique combination of letters and number.profilename.
I specify the location of the profile, in the Target line of the shortcut, by entering the profilename, but this renaming stuff is not the way to do it. After creating a new profile, which can be placed anywhere, it should remain there, and you can copy/paste files from another profile. They will work, as long as they do not include information about another profile. If you were able to "move" profiles of v.1.x, power to you, but moving is very dangerous, because you can, never tell where anything ends up, or will stay there. I, always, copy/paste.
One way to make sure that you have the correct profile, or to bring up the profile manager is to modify the Target line. You can see what it is by looking at the Properties of your shortcut. In my case the path is: "C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey\seamonkey.exe ", and you add a space, the letter p. That will bring up the profile manager, which should have a list of all the profiles, and if you wish to select a specific profile, have another keyboard space and the profilename. I have three of them available:

If there is no profile listed in the manager, it must have vanished in the "move ".

 

Hi Westside,

I tried as you suggested and — nothing. The only Profile is: xxxxxx.default on the C:\ drive.

That's exactly what happened; the newly created profile disappeared and I wasn't able to "move" anything. However, moving the SM 1.x profile was a breeze.

As I said, I wrote down and followed the instructions (incorrectly, obviously) and the only thing I wound up with is multiple login names and passwords for the same site.

I know I'm doing something wrong, I just can't figure it out.

 

Sorry, I related to you before doing a test. I did, creating a new profile, but I did not pay attention where it went. I selected the Profile folder of Seamonkey, which is wrong. It should have been a folder of its own, in the Profile folder. A basic profile was selected, but I can't find it. When I copied files from my "default" profile, they ended up unattached. In other words, I understand your frustration. Please refer to this article.
I will try to see if I can make some sense into this, but fortunately, having just copy/pasted, everything in its original place, at least.

 

Hi Westside,

Yes, it is frustrating to say the least. Thank you for the link, but that's where I went to get the info on Creating and Moving Profiles.

As I said, I'm obviously doing something wrong.

 

By the by, why am I not auto-logged in anymore with SM 2.5 here? It seems that some sites do and some sites don't.

Is there a setting I forgot to set?

 

jpChris,
I've been away for awhile....

Take a look at:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder#Mozilla_Suite_and_SeaMonkey_1.x

hope this is of some assistance

Regards: captjldd

 

Hi Capt'n,

The links that Westside and you gave me are where I went to get the info before I came here. One place says to copy the folder and another place says to copy the contents.

Hence my confusion.

 

jpChris,

Sorry that the link I gave you did not help. It gets somewhat confusing at times.

regards:captjldd

 

jpChris,

I think BOTH methods will work with a little dinking around.
From what I gather you have someting like this:

On c:\ drive you have:
C:\D&S\Adm\AppData\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles
and a Profile.ini file
In the directory you have one (1) profile :
xxxxxxxx.default..

so you have:

C:\D&S\Adm\AppData\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default

and you want to move this profile to D:\ someplace.....

Try the following:

1. CLOSE ALL instances of SEAMONKEY)
2. Open your favorite file manager (EXPLORER or whaterver you use)
3. CREATE a directory on D:\ drive.... Name it "SM_2.5_Profiles" - without
quotes.

4. Inside this directory, create another directory named "jpChris_profile"
again without quotes.

you should then have the following:

d:\SM_2.5_profiles\jpChris_profile\

5. Now copy the CONTENTS ONLY of the original profile :

"C:\D&S\Adm\AppData\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default" to the NEW directory you just created.....i.e "d:\SM_2.5_profiles\jpChris_profile\ "

6. Open Seamonkey 2.5 PROFILE MANAGER..... Manage Profiles.... CREATE PROFILE

7. CREATE PROFILE NAMED "jpChris_profile" ( the same name as the directory
you created above ) without quotes

8. Select "Choose Folder" ...Browse to and select the folder you created
above...
d:\SM_2.5_profiles\jpChris_profile\

9. In the profile manager - select and start Seamonkey 2.5 woth the NEW
profile you just created

In the "profile.ini" file you should now have an entry something like this....

[Profile2]
Name=jpChris_profile
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\SM_2.5_profiles\jpChris_profile

If I haven't ******* up someplace, this shoud work....

good luck and let me know

regards:captjldd

 

I left the matter up in the air in my last post, and this is all because I tried to test my ideas.
When I said that the files were unattached, I meant that the were not in any particular profile folder, but all over the Profile folder. Originally, I had three other profiles in the Profile folder. In other words, I had a mess. I tried to delete the pasted files, but may be I had too many wine, and, somehow, I ended up removing the existing profiles. Not so bad, if all I did was to remove the names in the Profile Manager, but I ended up, very thoroughly, removing all files. In other words all profiles were gone. May be the same as Chris. So, I went to my external backup drive, and, sure enough it had two of the three profiles. I copied and pasted that profile, and, I was back in business, or I thought I was. For some reason I had no new mail after March 3. May be there is another backup, I swear that I will not try to relax, in the future, if I will have to deal with profiles. I am ok, except for eight months of mail. But who needs that?
By the way, I updated from 2.5 to 2.6.1, and the program installed on top of the older one, but, for mysterious reasons, 2.6.1 decided to pick up another profile, which I did not know existed. So, back to the -p switch, even to tell SM to use the "default" profile.

 

@ Westside,

Phew! Good thing you had a backup!

@ Capt'n Davis,

OK, one step(s) at a time:

I created a folder on the D drive: D:\Mozilla2. I clicked that folder and created another folder called jpChris.

I went to C:\D&S\Adm\AppData\Mozilla\SeaMonkey\Profiles\xxxxx.default. I clicked on the xxxxx.default folder in the left pane of Windows Explorer and copied the entire contents of the right-hand pane into the "jpChris" folder of D:\Mozilla2.

(My next step should be to start the Profile Manager, click Create Profile, type in jpChris, and browse to: D:\Mozilla2? Or D:\Mozilla2\jpChris?) (If one of these is correct, I need to amend the profiles.ini file from:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=0

[Profile0]
Name=(default)
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/xxxxxxx.default

To:

Name=jpChris
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\Mozilla2\jpChris

Is this correct? Do I delete the "Profiles/xxxxxx.default altogether? And, should my slashes be forward (like the original or back like you and I have above? e.g., Path=D:/Mozilla2/jpChris?

I'm stopping here until I get confirmation.

Thanks.

 

Yes that looks good. browse to and select D:\Mozilla2\jpChris

If you do that, and finish - you shud seejpChris as a choice in Profile Manager. if it is there, it will be in the Profile.ini file - you shud NOT have to manually edit anything.

Let me know

regards:captjldd

 

So, I should click "jpChris" then, correct?

I really hate being so dense about this, but every time (without exception) I try to get the dang xxxx.default folder off my C:\ drive I always wind up with 2, 3 or 4 extra UserNames and Passwords!

 

jpChris.

Yes, that shud do it.

regards:captjldd

 

TADA!!! It worked!

Now I'm going to move the C:\Profiles Folder somewhere else and see if it still works.

I can see part of my mistake(s) in that one article said to move the "folder" and another said to move the "contents ". Thank you for clarifying it for me.

Thanks, again, Capt'n! If it all goes well I'll mark this as Resolved.

 

It's confirmed: I cut the Profiles folder from C:\ and pasted to E:\, shutdown, restarted, and it works! Plus, the Mozilla folder has gone from 610MB to 17MB.

Although for the life of me, I can't figure out why the Mozilla folder went on the C drive since I installed SM 2.5 on my D drive?

Oh, well, it works, my C drive is over 600MB smaller and I'm

Thanks, again.

 

Your program folder is not installed in the same path as the profile folder. The profile folder is placed (not installed) in Documents and Settings, by default, and that is the C drive. I made a mess of the entire thing, and, I ended up removing from the entire folders. I wish I had not, but, now I understand the principle. When you install a program, you can select a location, but profiles go into a default ( and hidden, for security) location. Obviously, you can get around the situation, but not in a way given by the program developers.