All my Pidgin accounts have disappeared

[Etan Reisner]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 01:55:57PM -0700, Barbara Kroczak wrote:
> I do have a accounts.xml file and a accounts.xml~ file in the
> C:\Documents and Settings\Barbara Kroczak\Application Data\.purple folder.
> What should I do with one of both of these?

You'll need to open them both up in your favorite text editor and see if
either of them contains your account information (a simple diff would be a
good start if you have a file comparison tool available). Assuming one of
the files is mostly complete you'll need to figure out if it is a valid
xml file.

The first thing you want to do is back both of those files up somewhere
safe so that you don't lose anything they might happen to contain. Then
if the accounts.xml~ file looks to be more-or-less complete you can try
copying it as accounts.xml and seeing if pidgin loads your accounts
correctly. There isn't much process to follow here, you just need to hope
that one of the accounts.xml files contains your account data and that you
can make it valid enough for pidgin to load (always making sure to keep a
pristine backup of the originals so you can keep trying from).

    -Etan