Standalone Keeps Making Me Create a Windows User Profile

heather.kazara

Hi guys,

My Zotero Standalone has gone really weird. Every time I open it Windows brings up a "Choose Profile" window, that you have to do to open Zotero. I keep setting up a profile so that Zotero opens. Whenever I shut Standalone and re-open it the profile thing comes up again with no profiles on it; forcing me to create another one.

This is also happening whenever I open Firefox.

I have had issues this past week with Zotero and Firefox (see https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/54838/zotero-standalone-not-working-on-new-computer/#Item_8).

Please can anyone fix this? I have no idea what is wrong with this. I suspect it has something to do with the way the computer has been set up by my department.

adamsmith

could you post a screenshot of what you're seeing to a free image hosting site (dropbox, imgur) and link to it here? I'm not sure which dialog we're talking about.

heather.kazara

I'm not at the office, so here is a screenshot from google images:

https://grok.lsu.edu/image/9354.jpg

This is the box that pops up every time I open Standalone or Firefox.

However my box is blank (with no users) even though I keep having to create a user to use Zotero or Firefox.

adamsmith

that sounds like your IT folks (i.e. some automated routine) are wiping your profile all the time. The profile picker would only come up in two situations
1) you have multiple profiles and checked to let you select every time (that's not the case here)
2) you don't have any profile. Zotero will automatically create a new profile when you start it, and it sounds like whatever it creates is being removed.

You could try to see where the zotero data folder is exactly:
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data]

and then see if that's still there when you close down Standalone & try to see what's happening to it. I'm sorry I can't help in more specific terms, but these obviously aren't things that Zotero does on a normal setup, so I'm guessing about your office IT setup here.

heather.kazara

Thanks for all of your help.

I managed to speak to the IT people and they altered the settings on the computer and now everything is working again. I think something was set up incorrectly originally, which is why it wasn't working.