Very, very saddly, I have to report, that the current installer of the Firefox Portable 2.0.0.1 searches your drive and deletes other installations of Firefox.
Just a few minutes ago, I have installed the Firefox Portable 2.0.0.1 on my usb drive (into a folder named "FirefoxPortable"). On the same drive, in another folder (named "FirefoxPortable1"), there was my old installation of Firefox Portable.. Now it is entirely gone, the "FirefoxPortable1" folder is empty.. The settings, the history, the bookmarks, the extensions ..everythings deleted. I tried to undelete but it's of no good.
I read that the installation manual tells me to backup my settings before I install. Well, I did! I am pretty sure! So why the hell the installer touched that backup in other directory?? And who the hell wrote an installer that deletes other applications??? Is not supposed to be possible to have two Firefoxes on the same drive?
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installer isn't really an installer at all it is simply a self extractor so there is no way that another unrelated directory could have been deleted. As you mention that you couldn't undelete it I suspect that your drive me be corrupted and that the installation of the new version just happened to speed it up and there are a lot of files that it extracts. Try running chkdsk from the command line on your drive to try and repair it.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Your assumption is incorrect. There are many other applications (and other data) on the very same usb disk. All of them are still running properly, even now. Some of them are from this site. I guess I was just lucky not to update their versions as well today.
Furthermore, it would be a really strange coincidence, that only the content of the two specific directories is missing (the "Miranda1" and "FirefoxPortable1"). These are the only two apps I have installed today. Everything else is still in place. Checkdisk reported no problems. All other data is accessible and readable. I was sure about this part before posting.
Do you really think that it is possible, that an entire content of a directory can just disappear by a corruption of a fat32 filesystem? I guess not. I know, how fat32 works. No blocks are missing or corrupted. Both directories are still there, just the files and subdirectories in them are gone. Even the undelete program can see some of them as deleted, but it can not restore them, 'cos they have already been overwritten by the new installed files.
So, I am sure, they were "deleted", not "corrupted". Their names were correctly udpated in the file allocation table and their blocks were freed exactly as if they were simply "deleted". The only question is: how, why and when they were deleted..
"Even the undelete program can see some of them as deleted, but it can not restore them,"
What undelete program are you using? Is it running from the host or the flash?
Tim
Geek w/o portfolio
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Running from the host of course. I tried to write to the flash as little as possible, as soon as I have discovered that there are important files missing, to prevent more free space overwritting. Unfortunatelly, it seems to be too late.
But, how does this matter? The data are physically gone as far as I am able to tell. I have already reconciled about that. I just wanted to report an installer bug here, which if exists, is a serious one, I believe. So I hope the author of the installer will read it and try to look into it. No hard feelings.
I can almost certainly guarantee that it's not an installer bug.
From what has happened, I'm guessing that something caused an overflow of the data into the other files.
Did you check the MD5 hash?
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
> I'm guessing that something caused an overflow of the data into the other files.
Okay, I am going to admit, this burns my circuits down completely.. Are we still talking about the deleting of my files from the fat32 filesystem from my usb flash drive? You know what, never mind.
Please, someone, point me to the correct direction, if this is the wrong place for reporting bugs. Some place, where I am about to reach someone more competent (the author would be ideal, but not necessary). At least I want someone who will not write the stuff right above. ...Otherwise, I am better out of here, doing some more useful things..
This is the correct place and I can guarantee that the author of the software reads these forums.
Also, insulting Steve, Tim and I will do you no good, please realise that we are just trying to help you out. This is a very weird problem that no-one has experienced before.
One more thing: Per the signature guidelines, (if it is your signature), your link must be to a personal homepage, probably http://jsimlo.sk/home/aboutme.php/en
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I have no interest in insulting you or anybody else, really, but let's face it.. Every time I have ever posted to forums like this, first I got replies full of stuff I really did not need to read, and only then I got a serious reply.. If any.
Is it because I have no history here to prove myself? Well, I am really tired of that. I do not care that you do not know me yet. I am a programmer myself. Obviously, I know how things work.. Is it really necessary to make an idiot of me before treating me seriously? What does the md5 has to do with fat32 filesystem? Why the question about running the undelete app from the flash? How was all this related to the installer bug I tried to report?
So, last and final time before I say sorry to you and just leave disappointed: I did not come here for an advice about how to undo, what has been done. I did not come here to report an imaginary bug. I did not come here for satisfaction or spamming. I did not come here of fury (although the loss of data was a pain, I admit).. I came here, because something happened and I considered it as a serious bug. I came here to talk about it with someone who wrote the installer. I wanted to cosider what could went wrong. Help him to search with me for a possible correlated problem. It happend to me, it could happen again to someone else. Well, I just got tired and probably a bit misunderstood.
So, sorry to Steve, Tim and Ryan. I meant no harm. Just try to skip the testing phase next time a bug is to be reported here.. Bye. jsimlo
Is it really necessary to make an idiot of me before treating me seriously? What does the md5 has to do with fat32 filesystem? Why the question about running the undelete app from the flash? How was all this related to the installer bug I tried to report?
We were not trying to make an idiot of you, we were trying to assess if there had been any other possible contamination.
I said to check the MD5, in case some virus or some thing else had contaminated the launcher on the way.
As John said, your USB is most likely the source of the problem.
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I can guarantee that the behavior you've seen is not caused by the installer or launcher. The installer is just a self-extracting archive. It's the equivalent of unzipping some files into a folder. There's no other programmatic logic within it, so it's incapable of messing with files in adjoining directories.
The launcher only utilizes files within its own directory. All the code is included, so you can even verify this for yourself. Lots of people keep multiple installs of FirefoxPortable installed and next to each other so they can test websites in alternate Firefox versions.
The only things I can think of is that your drive is on its way out. Or you have a misbehaving antivirus or antispyware app on the PC messing with it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The 'installer' for Firefox Portable, and the other portable apps is simply a 7-Zip self extractor, and as such does one thing only, and that is unpack itself to a sub-folder.
The launchers are all compiled NSIS scripts, and in regards to Firefox Portable v2.0.0.1, there are only four delete commands in it, three are to delete specific files within the portable firefox profile folders, and the fourth is to remove the %appdata% folder if it is empty.
I have not experienced this issue or anything like it before, and do not know of anybody else who has, and so I can't provide much help other than repeat the advice you have already been given, which was to check that the file system wasn't corrupt, and to keep an eye on your drive, as it may be on it's last legs. If you didn't 'safely remove' your removable drive after creating the two backup folders, that could be a possible cause. Other than that, I'm all out.
I shall return, if and when the usb goes dead or starts to loose other data.
Keep up the good work.
jsimlo
you tried it again to see if the same problem happened?
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Has it actually over written his profile?
Sounds like it has extracted itself to the drive, over written the usual FF files and not started with his previous profile as default.
He who dares rodders, he who dares my son!
He who dares rodders, he who dares my son!