*sigh* I hate to make this thread even begin to pop back into the most recent.... There's alot of fear and speculation and other nasty stuff going on here.. I'm going to try to make the situation clearer for those who aren't sure what bug affects what and if they're going to lose data or not.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228672
This bug has been fixed, it dealt with the Firefox installer, which, to clean up the install path and prevent alot of the known bugs dealing with installing an old firebird/firefox build onto another one, emptied the install folder, this feature, was known as Safe Upgrade.. and was
disabled in the Firefox 0.8 installer. The bug itself, was fixed for 0.8.0+ nightlies on 2004-03-16.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233625
This is the Uninstaller side of Bug 228672, this bug only happens
IF and ONLY IF, you installed into C:\Program Files (or another folder where the application is now mixed with another apps and data), it can only occur if you originally did a Custom Install, as by default, the install location is safe, C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.
To avoid this problem, be *sure* you explicitly state the full path, including \Mozilla Firefox if you choose to do a
custom install.. the Installer does NOT do this for you.
A simple way to check and see see if you're in danger of losing your files via this bug, is to check the install path, if firefox appears to be mixed with non-firefox stuff.. then don't use the uninstaller. Otherwise you're safe.
Also, since it hasn't been mentioned, the uninstaller *does* prompt you if you want to remove everything in the folder, if you're unsure,
choose no. The uninstaller will then, not kill any of your data or other programs. (See Bug 233625 Comment #5)
Tip: Never install an application in a folder not by itself. It's not a recommended practice.
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=239722
This installer/uinstaller bug, has a very specific set of circumstances that it will affect you. It's a windows only bug, and deals with installing firefox after a windows update, or other application that has set a registry key for pending file rename operations.. The issue is, somehow, the installer/uinstaller corrupt other entries in that key when adding/removing the one they use.
Workaround: Always be sure to reboot prior to installing Mozilla, if you have installed another program or update, that tells you you need to reboot when it completes.
This bug is blocking both the Mozilla Suite 1.7 and Firefox 0.9 releases.
A personal reminder, nightlies are experimental builds released by mozilla.org for testing, you should not install them for anything other than testing, and they can and in some cases will, eat your data. Luckly enough, most of the time these builds are just buggy with no critical errors, but they're auto-generated based on whatever the state of the codebase was in at the time, as long as it could build. It seems alot of people are now using nightlies instead of milestones for non-testing purposes, perhaps because of a need to have the latest and greatest? Please use caution, and remember these builds can do alot of strange stuff. Including eat your entire hard disk without warning.
I hope this post helps some people understand exactly what the bugs are, and how to avoid them.
-- Wolf
