Keeping Settings the Same for Multiple Accounts.

[Jennifer Boyle]

If one has multiple accounts, it's a convenience to keep the settings the same for all of them. Until now, I didn't know an easy way to do it, and they always seemed to change so they were different over time. It doesn't work to try to use Windows shortcuts to do it. What does work is something called symbolic links.

Here are step-by-step directions (for Firestorm 64-bit):

Use notepad to create a file named something.bat; I named mine Linkmaker.bat

Copy and paste the following lines into the file:

ECHO ON

DEL settings_per_account.xml

DEL toolbars.xml

MKLINK /H settings_per_account.xml %APPDATA%\Firestorm_x64\jennifer_boyle\settings_per_account.xml

MKLINK /H toolbars.xml %APPDATA%\Firestorm_x64\jennifer_boyle\toolbars.xml

PAUSE

Navigate to C:\Users|Username\AppData\Roaming\Firestorm_x64.

Choose one account, logically your main account, to be the one the actual files of which you'll use. Substitute the name of the folder for that account for "jennifer_boyle" in the file.

Save the file in the folder for any of the other accounts, and copy it to each of the others. Open each copy.

After you do this, the files will only actually exist in the main account folder, but the system will think that they are in each of the other folders, too.

That's it!

Now, any changes in the settings for one account will change the settings for all of the accounts.

The same procedure will work for other viewers. You just have to change "Firestorm_x64" to, for example, "SecondLife."

 

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

I thought by default your settings are saved for all accounts? When I change a setting on my alt and log off that specific settings is saved. Log in with another account it uses this changed setting.

I actually had to create separate Firestorm shortcuts in the past with different settings locations linked to keep my setting to change for all accounts (I only needed my main account full graphic settings for example, my alts were lower for performance).

[Alyona Su]

12 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

The same procedure will work for other viewers. You just have to change "Firestorm_x64" to, for example, "SecondLife."

Anyone short of total nerd-geek computer-I.T. department status should *NOT* follow these instructions. If for no other reason than you do not know who this person is or where they are in the world. Proceed at your own risk. If you ARE a techno-nerd the above instructions should be moot, anyway.

[Jennifer Boyle]

4 hours ago, Zeta Vandyke said:

I thought by default your settings are saved for all accounts? When I change a setting on my alt and log off that specific settings is saved. Log in with another account it uses this changed setting.

 

Some settings are per viewer, and some are per account. If you want to see which ones are per account, open settings_per_account.xml .

 

[Coffee Pancake]

If you want cross talk in your chat logs, this is a great way to get cross talk in your chat logs.

[Jennifer Boyle]

6 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If you want cross talk in your chat logs, this is a great way to get cross talk in your chat logs.

I don't understand. The default location for an account's chat logs is %APPDATA%\Firestorm_x64\Firstname_Lastname, and if the location is changed to the same folder for all accounts in the preferences, the chat for each account will still go into a separate folder named Firstname_Lastname within the new folder.

[Jennifer Boyle]

9 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

Anyone short of total nerd-geek computer-I.T. department status should *NOT* follow these instructions. If for no other reason than you do not know who this person is or where they are in the world. Proceed at your own risk. If you ARE a techno-nerd the above instructions should be moot, anyway.

There are many of us who are in-between. I had to do some Googling and reading to figure out how to do it, so it took some time. If I had been presented with the solution I suggest, and I had been concerned about it having some intended or unintended ill effect, I could have come to an understanding of how it works in a lot less time than I could figure out the details of how to make it work.

I just intended to share something I find useful.

[Nova Convair]

Yes you can use mklink to make the viewer use a specific file. The batch should do what it's supposed to do.

There is a debug setting in FS:  PerAccountSettingsFile that points to the settings_per_account.xml

Changing that should do the job too. I didn't try it out so I don't know for sure if it will work.

 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

10 hours ago, Nova Convair said:

There is a debug setting in FS:  PerAccountSettingsFile that points to the settings_per_account.xml

 

I didn't know that. I wish I had.

[Erwin Solo]

You can simply copy the settings_per_account.xml from the account you like, to the one(s) you want to update.  I've done it occasionally.  Never caused me any problems that I noticed.  That being said, my other accounts are mostly tester accounts and so I may not have noticed issues that would come from socialization.  

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 6/27/2019 at 5:09 AM, Erwin Solo said:

You can simply copy the settings_per_account.xml from the account you like, to the one(s) you want to update.  I've done it occasionally.  Never caused me any problems that I noticed.  That being said, my other accounts are mostly tester accounts and so I may not have noticed issues that would come from socialization.  

Right. I've done that before. The advantage of the method I posted is that any changes I make affect all accounts, which is what I want. For example, even after I've overwritten trhe settings_per_account.xml files in all of the accounts with the same one, it seems that eventually things like the order of the taskbar buttons diverge among accounts.