Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Can I change the default interface for capture?

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 15:51:13 -0800
On Sun, Jan 06, 2002 at 02:17:02AM +0000, Jack Spaar wrote:
> I might add that there seems to be a little
> confusion about where prefs are stored for 
> win32.  Recent docs mention a change to
> Application Data, but I was not able to
> save changed preferences until I used C:\ethereal\preferences.

What version of Windows are you using?

Ethereal will store preferences and other personal settings in an
"Ethereal" subdirectory of your "Application Data" directory only if you
have an "Application Data" directory or it can create one - and it can
only create one if you have a "profile" directory.

On Windows NT (NT 4.0, NT 5.0 a/k/a Windows 2000, NT 5.1 a/k/a Windows
XP), users all, as far as I know, have profile directories (under
"\WINNT\Profiles" on NT 4.0, under "\Documents and Settings" on NT 5.x
unless you've upgraded to 5.x from 4.0, in which case they're still
under "\WINNT\Profiles"), so that works.

It may be that on some versions of Windows OT (95, 98, Me), and perhaps
on all versions, either users don't have profile directories or they
don't have them by default.

If you don't have a profile directory, preferences and other personal
settings are stored in "C:\Ethereal"; however, a bug in the current
release prevents Ethereal from creating that directory if it doesn't
already exist.  To work around that:

	if you have a "C:\.ethereal" directory, rename it to
	"C:\Ethereal";

	if you don't have a "C:\.ethereal" directory, create a
	"C:\Ethereal" directory by hand.

(I don't know what other Windows applications, other than Netscape, do
if you don't have a profile directory and they store some personal
settings in files.

The fact that Netscape stuffs them in

	\Program Files\Netscape\Users\{your name}

suggests that perhaps, at least on some versions of Windows OT, there
really *IS* no standard place to store them, as Netscape apparently had
to invent one.)