Startup crash: Zotero trying to access Firefox browser default profile

navrava2
On clean install of Zotero 7the Windows application crashes on start with the following error [Username and profile folder redacted]:

NotAllowedError: Could not open the file at C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[XXXXXX].default\prefs.js
(No stack trace)
From previous event:
this.init@chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/zotero.js:273:34
getContentsFromURL@chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/file.js:339:13
Zotero.Intl</<@chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/intl.js:100:35
Zotero.Intl</this.getString@chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/intl.js:144:18
this.getString@chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/zotero.js:1523:24
ZoteroPane<@chrome://zotero/content/zoteroPane.js:3176:19
@chrome://zotero/content/zoteroPane.js:31:18
@chrome://zotero/content/zoteroPane.xhtml:82:25

It seems that Zotero is trying to access browser default profile instead of its own.
Running "zotero.exe -P" lists one default profile, hovering shows correct path to Zotero's AppData\Roaming folder. Choosing the default profile did not solve the issue so far.

Debug ID: D1392068580

Re-installing, restarting, installing Zotero 6 has already been tried.

I would be grateful for your advice!
  • dstillman
    This is likely due to security software on your computer preventing Zotero from checking your Firefox profile for an old (pre-2017) Zotero installation. This wouldn't be a problem if it was blocking access to profiles.ini, but it seems to be allowing that and only blocking access to the prefs.js file within the Firefox profile, which our code doesn't expect.

    We'll fix this, but you may be able to work around this by running Zotero once from the command line with this command:

    C:\Program Files\Zotero\zotero.exe -datadir C:\Users\[username]\Zotero

    Then try running Zotero normally.
  • navrava2
    Thanks for the quick workaround!

    Are there any limitations, or something to keep in mind when using or updating Zotero?
    Please let me know if there is anything to do after the code is fixed.
  • dstillman
    No, if it's working for you now after running that, this won't happen again.
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