Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:05:20 -0500
From: Fulvio Perini
To: Ramona
Subject: I did it! registry.dat is gone, and profile are usable

The procedure is as follows:

First of all registry.dat should not be in the "Read Only" mode. Someone at the Champion newsgroup told me so.

Secondly, since I had five additional Profiles, I had to make sure that I had the correct spelling of the Profile, and the path down pat.

Then:
1. Open one of the profiles, minimize it, open Windows Explorer, go to:
C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\
right click on registry.dat and delete
2. Close the "privileged" Profile, and open to test if it was ok. It was.
3. I, then proceeded to open, one at a time, the other Profiles. When I did the first, I saw only one Profile in the Profile Manager, the privileged one. Then I went to Manage Profiles/ Create Profiles. I entered the name of the desired Profile, where it says "default", and the "Choose to find the location". I entered the same name which I had before, and used the same location. Then, the name was added beneath the "privileged" profile. I selected the new Profile, and everything was back to normal.

4. Next I went back to C\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla and found that I had already 591kb in the newly formed registry.dat, so I changed the properties to "Read only". I cut Activation.dll from that installation, and pasted it in a special folder, just in case.

It really works.

-- F.Perini

snews://secnews.netscape.com:563/3D85F59B.3010304@mail.n0spam

Subject: Registry.dat monstrosity
From: "Warren C. E. Austin"
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:02:20 -0400
Newsgroups: netscape.netscape7.windows

If you only have "one" Netscape defined, re-naming the "registry.dat" whilst Netscape is open, with QuickLaunch disabled, will as others have stated re-build the registry.dat file upon exit.

If you have more than one defined under Netscape, close QuickLaunch from the task-bar, locate the "registry.dat" file and re-name it, and then launch Netscape's Profile Manager from the short-cut created in the START/PROGRAMS/Netscape folder. Once opened, select create "new" profile, and when prompted name the first profile exactly as you had before, and using the BROWSE button select the folder where your Netscape by that name is stored, but stop at the folder immediately above the one named for the ; repeat this process for each and every other . Once all have been defined once again, close and exit from the Netscape Profile Manager, and locate the "registry.dat" file for your first and make it "read-only" by right-clicking on the file and selecting properties, and then under the GENERAL tab (that's usually where it opens, tick read-only, apply and close; repeating this process for each and every profile.

I've done this a few weeks ago at the suggestion of one of the user's here and the "registry.dat" file for each profile has remained constant at 113Kb throughout the duration.

Either way, just make certain to locate the file, and make it read-only.

I've not encountered any problems thus far with plug-ins. I would of course remove the read-only attribute if I was going to make changes to a given and once having done so would re-set the read-only status. I in addition have the file backed-up, just in case I goof somewhere along the line and forget to restore the read-only attribute.

A further note:

If, each user logs-in to Windows using a user-name and password, creating their own Windows profile, it is simpler to re-create the "registry.dat" file only the once, but make certain to do so from the control (Administrator under Windows'2000 and Windows'XP) profile. Having done so copy this master registry.dat file to its' correct location in each and every Netscape root location. Do not open Netscape, but instead open the Profile Manager and "remove" all profiles other than the user specified by the Windows log-in. Make this file read-only. Repeat the process for each other user and their Netscape . Once this has been completed, make the original (the one with all profiles defined) also read-only. This will allow the Administrator to access all profiles to make uniform changes as necessary, but restrict others access to only their own profile; this also launches Netscape without the Profile Manager for each user. This latter function can similarly be achieved for the Administrator account by creating a short-cut, placing it on the Windows Explorer QuickLaunch feature-bar, specifying the Administrator's Netscape in the command-line switch, which when activated from the Windows Explorer QuickLaunch feature-bar will open Netscape without the Profile Manager, defaulting to the specified account in the command-line. Netscape's QuickLaunch Task-bar Icon will continue to bring up the Profile Manager as before.

Warren C. E. Austin
---

From: "Warren C. E. Austin
Newsgroups: netscape.netscape7.windows
Subject: Re: registry.dat
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 01:11:43 -0400
Organization: Another Netscape Collabra Server User

Jim Madsen wrote:

Warren C. E. Austin wrote:

Jim Madsen wrote:

OK guys, my registry.dat is at 6.9 MB--so I just need to delete it and it will be regenerated?

Exactly what kind of data is in that file anyway?

Jim
---

The file is the Netscape "Registry" that stores all of the profile information, etc. It increases in size due to plugin update information from what I'm told. I don't have a very complete analysis at hand although the programmers are quite upset at the plugin people for some reason or other ... :-)

--
Jay Garcia - Netscape Champion

---

Thanks Warren. A lot of the answers aren't real good ones, but will try some of the suggestions in the thread.

Jim
---

They (the mozilla team) are working on this. It will be a done deal probably with the next small point release.

The interim "fix" of deleting the file with Netscape 7.x open, and after closing the file being regenerated at a significantly smaller size works; but once re-sized it is imperative that you make the file "read-only" ("right-click" on the file, select Properties from the context-menu, and tick the correct box, apply and close) to ensure it doesn't start growing again.

This fix which works under 7.x does not under 6.x.x, so that indicates some measure of progress.

(For those who have multiple profiles, take note... when you delete registry.dat, NS appears to only recognize one profile when you restart the program. Open the Profile Manager and create a new profile for each of the other profiles using exactly the same names they had previously. It will not overwrite the old ones, as one might expect... it will re-activate the ones you are looking for.)

Laurence
---

Incidentally, something that is not clear in the prior "posts", is that this file should be re-generated from within each , with each handled in the manner I outline.

Warren C. E. Austin

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