does firefox portable write to registry? i assume all programs need the registry to operate?
New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
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New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
No Ads November!, Please donate today
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but it makes a backup of the local keys and restores them after run.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Alas, I found that it the registry entry was NOT removed after exiting. I only realized that Firefox Portable wrote to the registry after finding that several apps on my hard drive were no longer working. It turns out that the registry key Hkey_Classes_Root\HTTP\shell\open\command no longer pointed to Firefox on my hard drive but to Portable Firefox on my G drive (the flash drive), even though the drive was no longer plugged in. In fact, I joined this forum just so that I could ask what I could do to prevent this from happening again, both on my computer and on other computers where I'd be using the flash key. I'd welcome some help with this.
Thanks in advance.
John says that Portable FF is supposed to clean up after itself. It sounds like you have found a situation where it doesn't. If you are using the most recent release, and you can get it to break consistently (that is, each time you reset it to point to the regular install, the portable one takes that key over, even if you exit properly and give it time to clean up) you probably need to start your own topic and be very specific.
It probably has something to do with the "check to make sure FF is the default browser" setting. That is, if you load the installed FF and click the "check now" button, it should reset that registry entry. If you then later load the portable FF and it takes over that registry entry even after you have allowed it to exit gracefully, that needs to be reported.
edit
I just confirmed that if the FF on your portable drive is made the default (which shouldn't happen automatically) it isn't reverted once FFPortable exits. I'd say that is at least inconvenient, if not a bug. The check box or "check now" button shouldn't be used on the Portable version. If they are (manually) then this situation applies. One solution is "don't make it your default browser" ... but that probably isn't a good long-term solution, since not everyone will be able to resist the temptation. Or maybe there is another oddity that makes FFPortable your default without your participation...
MC
Thanks very much for your helpful comments. I thought perhaps the problem had disappeared; I used Portable Firefox a couple of times without it changing the registry key. But then it did it again. I've now checked to be sure that I didn't have the "check to see whether FF is the default browser" checked on the Portable version--I don't. And I think I've exited gracefully--I first closed Portable FF and then closed the Portable Apps menu. However, since the problem doesn't occur each time I use Portable FF, just sometimes, I'm not sure whether I should start a new thread.
Firefox creates a single registry key on first run (the first time run with a new profile). The Firefox Portable launcher will automatically handle this for you, though (removing it on exit).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I notice that the launcher is not waiting for FF to exit. Is that intentional? It looks like it is doing ExecWait, but it seems to go away shortly after FF is launched.
I confirmed that the checkDefaultBrowser is set to false (after I checked that box, exited, then restarted) but the registry setting is not reverted.
MC
Not all programs touch the registry. Many do, but some are using .ini, .config, .xml, or other files under the program directory. Many older programs used to use an .ini file under the Windows subdirectory.
As a result, the developers here have to use various different techniques to make the programs portable.
pluginreg.dat