Changing profile

[Eustace]

I created a new profile at the D: drive, replaced its contents with
those of the old profile, opened the Profile Manager and deleted the old
profile and all its files. Opened Thunderbird and everything seems to be
as it should.

Now, in the (default) Application Data\Thunderbird folder there are the
following 2 files:

profiles.ini
registry.dat

that I do not see in the new Thuderbird folder that contains the new
profile. Should these be copied to it? Or are they unnecessary?

And, is it OK to delete the old Application Data\Thunderbird folder?

I have Windows XP.

Eustace

--
It ain't THAT, babe! - A radical reinterpretation
http://www.geocities.com/itaintme_babe/itaintme.html

[Ron K.]

Eustace keyboarded:

> I created a new profile at the D: drive, replaced its contents with
> those of the old profile, opened the Profile Manager and deleted the
> old profile and all its files. Opened Thunderbird and everything seems
> to be as it should.
>
> Now, in the (default) Application Data\Thunderbird folder there are
> the following 2 files:
>
> profiles.ini
> registry.dat
>
> that I do not see in the new Thuderbird folder that contains the new
> profile. Should these be copied to it? Or are they unnecessary?
>
> And, is it OK to delete the old Application Data\Thunderbird folder?
>
> I have Windows XP.
>
> Eustace
>

The profiles.ini is needed. Look at it with a text editor such as
Notepad and It should have a record of the new profile on the D: drive.
I am not as familiar with the registry.dat, however it may also contain
pointers to the new profile location. If it does, then my recommendation
is keep them as is. The editing to permit there relocation poses some
risks of loosing access to the profile.

--
Ron K.
Who is General Failure, and why is he searching my HDD?
Kernel Restore reported Major Error used BSOD to msg the enemy!

[Onno Ekker]

Eustace wrote:
> I created a new profile at the D: drive, replaced its contents with
> those of the old profile, opened the Profile Manager and deleted the old
> profile and all its files. Opened Thunderbird and everything seems to be
> as it should.
>
> Now, in the (default) Application Data\Thunderbird folder there are the
> following 2 files:
>
> profiles.ini
> registry.dat
>
> that I do not see in the new Thuderbird folder that contains the new
> profile. Should these be copied to it? Or are they unnecessary?
>
> And, is it OK to delete the old Application Data\Thunderbird folder?
>
> I have Windows XP.
>
> Eustace
>
>

The profiles.ini file in %APPDATA%/Thunderbird tells Thunderbird which
profiles you have and where they are stored. Normally they are stored
relatively in the Profiles subdirectory, but you changed that to your D:
disk.

You cannot move the profiles.ini file however, so you cannot remove the
Thunderbird folder either.

I don't know what the registry.dat is used for. I have it too, but it
looks like a static file. Mine has time stamp 30-10-2006...

Onno

[Eustace]

Thanks to both of you. So, if I understand correctly, when Thunderbird
starts it looks in the default directory (%APPDATA%/Thunderbird) to find
out where to go to find the profile, right?

emf

[Ron K.]

Eustace keyboarded, On 8/30/2008 2:02 AM :

Right. The only difference between the profile being on D:/ or in a profile
folder in %appdata%/thunderbird is the addressing method, absolute versus
relative.

[Onno Ekker]

Eustace wrote:
> I created a new profile at the D: drive, replaced its contents with
> those of the old profile, opened the Profile Manager and deleted the old
> profile and all its files. Opened Thunderbird and everything seems to be
> as it should.
>
> Now, in the (default) Application Data\Thunderbird folder there are the
> following 2 files:
>
> profiles.ini
> registry.dat
>
> that I do not see in the new Thuderbird folder that contains the new
> profile. Should these be copied to it? Or are they unnecessary?
>
> And, is it OK to delete the old Application Data\Thunderbird folder?
>
> I have Windows XP.
>
> Eustace
>
>

I just stumbled upon the Mnenhy extension, which includes a feature to
show the contents of Mozilla's registry files. It also gives a little
explanation about the registry.dat file:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2516

* Registry Viewer (Tools -> Registry Viewer)
[SeaMonkey, Mozilla, Thunderbird and Firefox]
Mozilla and its derivates use a special database format inherited from
older Netscape versions, e.g. for their version registry mozver.dat or
the profile registry registry.dat. The Registry Viewer provides a nice,
handy tree view of the contents of these files.

I've installed Mnenhy once more in a separate profile (didn't want it to
change my user-agent again) to view the contents, but it didn't look
that spectacular to me.

I haven't tried removing/renaming the registry.dat file, since it's not
in the way for me and I don't want to break my Thunderbird.

Onno

[Onno Ekker]

I keep forgetting that attachments don't show up here.

If you want to see what the (a, my) registry.dat file looks like and
don't want to install Mnenhy yourself, take a look here:

http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/9464/mozillaregistrywu0.png

I'm a first time imageshack user, so I hope this works...

Onno