I was just wondering if anyone had any experience moving an existing Portable Firefox installation folder from one USB device to another. I tried to copy an image of one USB drive to another, larger one. All of my other portable apps are completely happy on their new home drive (as I expected they would be), but Firefox is not.
When launched from the original thumb drive, everything is still OK. But on the new drive the migrated installation is "broken", even after repeated attempts and methodologies to copy it. The program seems to launch/run just fine, which is nice. But, none of the extensions are seen and the toolbars/buttons/options aren't set up like they are on the original drive.
Now, I would expect you'd run into this sort of "wonkiness" if you were masochistic enough to try moving a program folder between, say, two different Windows XP boxes. You know, on the new machine you'd be missing registry entries, maybe customization files squirrelled away in the My Documents folder, and other little hidden-but-needed bits that would get left behind on the old machine and not transferred to the new one.
But, I would have expected Portable Firefox to be bullet-proof to this sort of manipulation, as I was under the impression that all needed files "lived" only on the USB device. How does the Portable Firefox app (and associated customization files) even "know" it has been moved? The two drives, apart from their size differnce, are identical. I'd hoped the transfer would have been "transparent", but Firefox is wise to my shenanigans, and is not cooperating. I'm at a loss to figure it out, but hoped maybe some guru here would have some insight as to why it's misbehaving.
Thx,
S-M
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Unless there's an issue with a drive. Firefox Portable will run from anywhere, even your desktop if you want it to (except when you use non-ASCII characters in your path). Some extensions will break when the path/drive letter changes and cause FF to stop working, though. You'll generally notice that when you move between PCs with the same drive, though, as the drive letter changes.
In short, it's either an extension... or something with your drive. I'd guess an extension. To be sure, copy it to your desktop and run it from there. If it fails, you have an incompatible extension.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I guess you can't get any more "guru" than you, huh?
Thanks so much for your prompt reply.
I had, in fact, tried the "plop it on the desktop" trick, just before posting. It did, in fact, "break" there as well.
/shrugs
Obviously, Portable Firefox itself is "bulletproof" and perhaps, as you suggest, the extensions are what is tripping me up. It's no biggie. I was just hoping to get away with not having to reinstall them all, but, whatever. It's a small price to pay for the sublime "awesomeness" that is portable app living.
Thanks, again, John, and keep up the great work...
S-M
Which extensions are you using. I'm compiling a list of incompatible and unrecommended ones to add to the support page.
Oh, and you're welcome
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Deleting the extensions.rdf file in PortableFirefox\Data\profile(I think)? I have ran into 1 computer(out of many) that does this to my FF(shows no extentions & no themes installed or they just won't work). The only way to fix it is to delete extensions.rdf & restart FF(note it takes a bit longer to start, it is rebuilding extensions.rdf). Needless to say, I try really hard not to use my FF on that PC!
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which extension it is, you could try emailing the author (I did and my faulty extension now works fine) there's also the side effect of it helping all the other pff users out there who might use that extension.
Huzzah!
That worked like a charm, LB!
You're right, you need to be patient when you restart. Several times I got the 'script not responding' dialog, with the option to kill the script or let it continue.
I patiently kept clicking the 'continue' button (it took about three times), but, sure enough, when the FF finally opened: Yippee!!
All bits and pieces were recognized, and in the right places... and there was much rejoicing.
Thx, LB.
John, if you still want a list of extensions, I'd be happy to bounce them over to you, anyway (there are quite a few).
Thx all, for your thoughts/suggestions.
S-M
I think he only wants a list of extensions that DON'T work, not all of them, so you'd have to work out which one was causing the problems first.
Nope, John specifically asked him "What extensions are you using?" That would include all extensions, not just the incompatible ones.
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Glad I could help.
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