This problem just began happening and I believe is related to a forced update (at work) to WinXP. All of a sudden firefox thinks the drive is readonly and will not run, it asks to copy it locally and run it from there. The message is "Firefox Portable appears to be running from a location that is read-only. Would you like to temporarily copy it to the local hard drive and run it from there?" I have researched this and found that Microsoft uses the read-only attribute on folders internally to specify that a folder has a customized view. I have tried every solution I could find to remedy the situation but none work. The Microsoft knowledge base article is listed here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549, the fix that they describe does not work. They say that Microsoft and all Microsoft supported apps ignore the read-only flag on folders. I am assuming PortableFirefox checks the read-only attribute on the Data folders to determine if it is being run from a CD? A regular installation of firefox to the local hard drive runs fine and ignores the attribute, but then it is not portable. I am running the latest RC of PortableFirefox 2.0. I have tried reverting back to the previous version I had before but have the same problems.
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0"
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FirefoxPortable.exe actually writes a file. If that file fails to write, then the drive, for all intents and purposes as far as Firefox Portable is concerned *IS* read-only, since it can't write to the disk. It doesn't check any attributes.
Try the 2.0 Pre-Release 1 in the Beta Forum. And keep in mind that no 2.0 version is "released" yet, so all comments go in the appropriate beta testing thread.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
What's wrong with the 2.0 RC3 distribution?
Vintage!
Always best to use the most recent as no further bug reports or fixes are being made to the older launcher.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I will try a newer version, but what get's me is that this happened with the old 1.5 version I was running also. When I upgraded to the 2.0 RC3 I zipped the entire Portable Firefox directory and since this issue I cannot run that one either now. I realize this is not a firefox issue, I just wondered if anyone else had the same problem or there was a way around it. I am lost without firefox, I had to keep using IE (gross), actually I think it was the update that installed IE7 that did it.
A file write to the disk is the best way to determine read-only status but I can't see why that would fail. The disk does not have a write-protect switch and I can edit and delete anything else on the drive with no problems. Just another way of Microsoft messing with us.
Daren Iott
Daren Iott
Try this launcher:
https://portableapps.com/temp/FirefoxPortable1330hack1.exe
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It asks me to accept the license agreement and then looks like it does some sort of quick copy but then I get the same message about being run from a read-only drive.
Last night I took everything off the drive and totaly reformatted the drive and put everything back on. I tried with the latest release of firefox 2.0, I even tried using one of the nightly builds of 3.0a1. I try my older version of 1.5 but nothing worked.
Not sure what it could be, I'm sure it's not PortableFirefox's issue but I wonder if other people have a similar problem. I am certain it is something Microsoft did.
If PortableFirefox open source (never looked) I know firefox is, maybe I could try tracing through it on my drive to find out where it is failing on the read only check. When the file-write fails is an exception caught and possibly logged that could tell me why the file-write failed?
Daren Iott
Daren Iott
It's open source (the source is included) but there is no exception logging. It's quite literally 3 lines:
ClearErrors
FileOpen $0 "$PROFILEDIRECTORY\writetest.temp" w
IfErrors "" WriteSuccessful
If you haven't changed anything, profile directory would be FirefoxPortable\Data\profile. So, all it does is try to open a file for writing in that folder called writetest.temp. If there's an error, opening the file for writing failed.
So, basically, there's something wrong with your system or the drive you're running it from... and I'm not sure how to help you diagnose what.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Sorry to have wasted your time. Somehow the profile directory was corrupted, the directory was transformed into a file? So when it tried to write to the profile directory it didn't exist but it also could not create it because a file with the same name and no extension already existed. When trying other releases I was trying to maintain my bookmarks and password so I copied the data directory to the other new release of 2.0RC3. I tried a totally fresh copy of RC3 and it worked, so then I copied my bookmarks and passwords out of a backup I had to the fresh installation profile directory. Back up, now with bookmarks and passwords, had to re-install add-ons but everything is back to normal and this post is coming from within firefox. Thanks.
Daren Iott
Daren Iott