GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 545915
User Preferences not store in GnuCash / Vista
Last modified: 2018-06-29 22:08:12 UTC
Gnucash does not store user preferences eg. the tip of the day and welcome dialog always appears even when you select for them not to come up each time. It seems to be a problem with all user preferences ie. none of them are saved. I have suspected a file permissions issue under Vista. I have tried running as administrator and/or in compatability mode for windows XP. In addition, I have tried installing in different locations eg. c:\ and c:\program files\ Finally, I have tried to find out where the user preferences are stored. I understand they are stored in a file called config.auto, but I cannot find this file in the installation, or anywhere else on my hard drive. This problem has existed on my vista computer on all 2.2.X versions.
No, those settings are stored in a gconf database, which is located in ~\.gconf, where ~ is C:\Users\$yourname by default, I think. _Never_ touch those files when gconfd-2.exe is running! Typically, if you want to change anything in gconf, you will use gconftool-2.exe which is distributed with the GnuCash package as well. A man page can be found at http://linux.die.net/man/1/gconftool-2 and our keys are all saved under /apps/gnucash. Do you experience a long time to startup the program as well? You might want to test with --spawn and --ping; echo %errorlevel% first. I hope that helps a bit to track down the problem. Your personal firewall may be related to it.
The workaround I have used is to use GnuCash Portable. It does not have any problems saving the settings inside the program. I did re-install the normal edition to try the suggested ideas. Turning off the firewall did not help. The only file in \.gconf was a zero length file called saved_state. I have concluded that the most likely explanation is that the way gnucash installs on Vista prevents the settings being saved into the gconf database. I am not inclined to spend time learning about the gconf database so I will continue to use GnuCash Portable but would be happy to advise if somebody wishes to try and solve this issue.
Maybe it is time for some housekeeping. It is somewhat reckless to dump all files into the top user directory (local disk/documents and settings/user) instead of creating a dedicated directory for the program files and ideally another one for the data file(s), like (local disk/documents and settings/user/My Documents/Gnucash data). That way one does not have to hunt around to figure out what files belong to Gnucash and which ones are windows files. Overall, version 2.2.9 is working fine for me for 2 weeks now. Before that I was using MS Money 2007. No problems with the importation.
Hi, I am experiencing this same problem. I have installed on Windows XP SP3 version 2.2.9. Any thoughts on what the cause may be? I have installed on a Windows XP machine at a friends without issue. I have had and do have many things installed on this machine. From things like activeperl and bugzilla to Alfresco and all the Microsoft development tools. I have to think that this is either a permissions issue, which seems unlikely, or a conflict issue with other installed software.
Same problem with both 2.2.9 and 2.3.7 in XP SP3 - no saved preferences (after closing the preferences box and reopening it, the changes aren't saved, even without closing GnuCash), unable to disable tip of the day, or open the previously opened file automatically instead of prompting with the first-time run wizard. Only found 0 byte save_state in .gconfd, no obvious config files in .gnucash. Possibly a conflict with gimp? I have 2.3.7 installed in a virtual XP SP3 environment on another computer with no problems.
I did a bit of investigating after reading some of the above comments, and it seems as though all of the settings for my working install of 2.3.7 are being stored in C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\.gconf\apps\gnucash, and successfully stores settings. The various XML files in the \apps\gnucash folder definitely contain the settings in question - preferences, tip-of-the-day on startup, etc.. I tried transplanting those from my working install to the problematic one to no effect (I tried all of the following copying .gconf to \USERNAME, copying \apps into .gconfd (whose saved_state file does seem to change size during GnuCash operation but without any apparent effect), and copying .gconf into \All Users\). But perhaps that's the problem, unless saved_state is the new consolidated version of all those XML files. Haven't tried with 2.2.9.
I would like to add another confirmation of this bug. Preferences do not save, which is particularly irksome when the default setting is for it to pop up a save-reminder box every five minutes, and it thinks I'm a new user every time I open the program. I am using Windows XP SP2, using GnuCash version 2.2.9 Looking in /Documents and Settings/USER/ I do not find a directory named .gconf at all, only one labeled .gconfd which contains nothing the 0 length file named "saved_state" mentioned by the others reporting this issue. I do have Gimp installed, in case that is the conflict.
*** Bug 640326 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Just for reference, bug 640326 confirms this problem still exists in GnuCash 2.4.0. So far this issue could be related to two other already reported problems (though I can't reproduce either on my Windows XP system): * GnuCash (or the gconf library it uses) doesn't have the proper permissions to create the .gconf directory's contents, or the .gconf directory is created with the wrong permissions to begin with. A similar issue has been reported in bug 466512 which is still unresolved until now. * The gconfd program won't run (or will die shortly after is has started). This is the cause of bug 521817, also still unresolved until now. I'd like to test what happens if you store the configuration data in another location. Anyone running 2.4.0, can you try: * Append this line: HOME={APPDATA}/GnuCash to c:\Program Files\GnuCash\etc\gnucash\environment * Start GnuCash (which at this point still has no settings to read) * Alter some preferences * Restart GnuCash Were the settings preserved now ?
Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. This bug has been copied to https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=545915. Please update any external references or bookmarks.