Profile in use: Difference between revisions

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* If you are running the application from removable media on a Windows system, open the "profiles.ini" file (located up a few levels in the folder hierarchy from your [[Profile folder|profile folder]]) and make sure that the drive letter and path to your profile are correct.
* If you are running the application from removable media on a Windows system, open the "profiles.ini" file (located up a few levels in the folder hierarchy from your [[Profile folder|profile folder]]) and make sure that the drive letter and path to your profile are correct.
* This problem can also occur if you don't have the rights to edit the files in the profile (or create the lock file in the first place). Please note that this can happen if you try to use a profile from a filesystem mounted with read-only (e.g. a remote Windows share which doesn't have "allow network users to change my files" checked). This can be pretty tricky to diagnose because there is no lock file in the profile, yet the same message appears (profile in use).


===See also===
===See also===
* [[Browser will not start up]]
* [[Browser will not start up]]

Revision as of 18:44, 8 April 2005

When Mozilla Suite (or Firefox or Thunderbird) is in use, it locks the active profile to keep other programs from altering the contents or causing conflicts. This lock is normally transparent to the user, but sometimes the profile remains locked when it's not expected. Thus, if you launch the application and the Profile Manager says that your profile is already "in use", it's telling you that the profile is locked.

This problem can occur for a few different reasons:

  • The application may not have shut down completely the last time it was used. Check for any open windows. Go through your list of running processes to see if the application is still running in the background. If it is, ending that process should unlock the profile.
  • The application may have shut down abnormally, leaving the lock in place. To fix this, find your profile and delete the file named "parent.lock" (Windows), "lock" (Linux), or ".parentlock" (Mac OS X). In OS X you need to use a free utility like Onyx or Maintain to turn on visibility for invisible files to show ".parentlock". This file contains no information, and deleting it will unlock the profile.
  • Netscape 7 or another Mozilla-based program may be using the profile. Try shutting down this program to unlock the profile. Additionally, you should create separate profiles for each different application. Especially if you use both Mozilla Suite and Netscape 7, corruption can result from sharing the same profile between two different programs. (This problem is unlikely with Firefox and Thunderbird, since they do not share profiles with other applications in the way that Mozilla Suite and Netscape 7 can share profiles.)
  • If you are running the application from removable media on a Windows system, open the "profiles.ini" file (located up a few levels in the folder hierarchy from your profile folder) and make sure that the drive letter and path to your profile are correct.
  • This problem can also occur if you don't have the rights to edit the files in the profile (or create the lock file in the first place). Please note that this can happen if you try to use a profile from a filesystem mounted with read-only (e.g. a remote Windows share which doesn't have "allow network users to change my files" checked). This can be pretty tricky to diagnose because there is no lock file in the profile, yet the same message appears (profile in use).

See also