Default search in sequenced Firefox not working

Question

Dear Pro´s,
I´m currently trying to sequence Firefox (v34.0.5) which is working fine except one problem.
There is no default search at all when running it on clientside.
What I do:
Before I start sequencing I´m setting the following exclusions:
•[{AppData}]\Mozilla
•[{Common AppData}]\Microsoft\RAC
•REGISTRY\USER\ [{AppVCurrentUserSID}]\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
Then I start the sequencing with a cmd-file which just runs the firefox-installation with the params "-ms" and "/ini" following an ini-file.
Then, when the installation is finished, I run Firefox once and delete all searches but google and set it as default.
After that I´m publishing it on the managementserver and log in to the client. When I then start the published Firefox there´s no search provider at all. Not even google, which I left in there as default.
I cannot find any problems for firefox in any event log.
Do you guys have any idea?
Thanks in advance
GoProo

Answer 1

Hi,
we are facing the same problem. I dived a little deeper and compared the behaviour of firefox when using App-V and when running without any virtualization.
With App-V:
QueryDirectory for "C:\ProgramData\App-V\B014C463-F988-4DB8-BE63-AF10464FFD31\38FAEB93-2A89-4872-999D-C0797E0D2253\Root\VFS\ProgramFilesX86\Mozilla Firefox\browser\searchplugins\*":
Followed by the list of found .xml files:
After retrieving this list, no more access to the files of this directory occur.
If you look at the log using a non-virtualized Firefox, you see the same listing but followed by actual read-operations to the xml files. Then all Search Engines are shown correctly.
Does anyone have an idea why Firefox stops reading the files? Are the paths too long or is Firefox really not aware of this when virtualized?
For myself I found a workaround. I redirected all %appdata% folders to a network share (on my Citrix XenApp servers). Because all Firefox Profiles reside on this share, I copy the searchplugins folder to the firefox profiles, as one can see accesses to this
folder, too. In this location the xml files can be found and will be used.
Downside is, new users won't have the files and should get them using scripting on first launch of the application (i.e. after profile creation in %appdata%).
Anyone with a better idea of solving this?
Regards,
Andre
PS: I added images to this post to make things clearer, but I'm not allowed to post images or links, yet. @Microsoft: Thats very annoying and will not keep me as a user in this forum.
Andre,
How are you copying the search engines?  The .default is randomly generated, correct?  Thanks.