Forums Bug Reports Registered mIRC and roaming profiles

I have a very annoying problem with mIRC 6.31. I use Windows Roaming Profiles. This means that my full user profile is synchronized to the server at log-off. Then I log in on my laptop and the profile (including the %APPDATA%\mIRC folder) is loaded from the server. Note that the HKCU\* tree of the registry is synchronized as well.

When I start mIRC on my laptop then it will pop up an annoying message box where it says is verifies my mIRC registration. After successful verification it works as expected. Then I log off and re-login on my desktop machine - so the profile is synchronized to the desktop machine. And here the same dialog appears again. Each time I use another machine it re-verifies my registration, very annoying.

I think the mIRC registration verification is somehow bound to some local machine data and therefore needs re-verification each time. From my point of view its a bug. I can imagine that this was done to prevent paying users just to transfer all data to somebody the machine of somebody else while the registration keeps valid. However finally it's just annoying paying mIRC supporting people like me.

I have no problem if mIRC requires a re-verification on a new machine. But please verify only once and save the verification of all valid machines. Currently it looks like the verification is overwriting the one valid for my second machine each time.

Each verification process ties mIRC to a specific machine-- this is intended and necessary behaviour to make sure one user is using one license in reasonable capacity.

You can opt to keep the registration data in mirc.ini I believe, by using the -noreg switch. This still means you'd need two mirc.ini's though, which can be done with the -i or -r switch. You can try to figure out a setup that suits you best by looking at /help Command Line and playing with the switches.

Very bad idea. The software is licensed by a person (to which the profile belongs) and not by a machine. Some people are using multiple machines and like to have the same data on all machines.



Thanks for the hints. So what you're saying is basically that I have to mess around and try different switches in order to get it working somehow. Probably it's easier to just get the latest crack from somewhere.

Additionally using two mirc.ini files means that the settings are splitted. Therefore I need to configure mIRC on both machines independently. Moreover I need to create custom shortcuts.

Absolutely stupid...

As there seems to be no interest to support registered users I am looking for alternative programs which I can recommend for friends, companies and others. Of course they are asking me for alternatives when I recommend them not to buy mIRC or they discover the same roaming problem on their machines.

Only the ones using a "patched" mIRC binary do not have this problem but I suggest them to support the development if they like it (that's what I did as well) and in return they get punished for paying.

Well it might be unpopular to ask such a question within the mIRC forum but there might be lots of people with experiences on other clients.

So far I know
- NetIRC
- XChat
any others recommended?

You seem very eager to be outraged about this.

Who says there's no interest in the issue? The number of people responding to your post is completely irrelevant here seeing as there's only one person on these boards who has the ability to effect changes in mIRC - in which case it's entirely possible he hasn't even read this thread yet seeing as it's been less than five days since your original post. There's no need to get wound up over it.

And for the record the only other IRC client I've tried in the last few years is XChat (on Linux). It was an unpleasant experience to say the least; I guess it's designed with a very different userbase in mind than mIRC.

Well, I think that's the right of a customer if there is such a problem with the product which can only be noticed after buying the product.



Yes, probably I am expecting too much from a commercial product. Additionally it's not really clear to me who in this board can give "authoritative" answers. There is an answer from argv0 which proposes some workarounds. Some might find that acceptable - some might not. I don't know if the answer of argv0 is somehow official and the final decision of mIRC development "team".



Thanks - seems to be identical to my experience. I don't consider XChat to be very user-friendly (except for geeks) ;-). I am fine with it but mainly non-it-expert users might not.

So let's see what happens, probably there are some more proposals or I am lucky and this single person who has the ability to effect changes will give at least a statement if this is going to be enhanced/fixed. I think it's absolutely fine if I look for alternatives meanwhile.

More than 100 reads within these five days also show some "public" interest in this topic. I assume it's not only affecting roaming profiles but also all users transferring their settings manually or automatically to another machine.

Thanks again for all your input.

Yes, but my point was that there's a difference between expecting a bug to be fixed and declaring that nobody is interested in fixing it within days of the initial report. Bugs are an inevitability in computer software, in situations like mIRC's where there are a limited number of developers (ie. 1) it's not unreasonable to have a week or two before getting a response on the issue.


The only person who can give an authoritative answer is Khaled Mardem-Bey, (username Khaled on the boards) seeing as he is the only actual developer on mIRC.

I agree - I am a developer myself and I know about that problems. However it was not clear to me that there is only one developer active.
In fact this reveals a big risk on mIRC development. Closed source and only one single person seems to know the existing code and has access to it. Additionally it looks that there seem to be too many requests that the owner cannot even post a message like "I will have a look at it ASAP" or directly "won't fix" or "I don't care". Probably I am expecting too much. I am sorry for that. I will wait for some more time then since now I know that there seems to be only one person in charge - in this case it's also clear to me that this person is overloaded.



Many thanks. So let's patiently wait if he will give some statements on that issue.

As far as I know, Khaled has always been the only developer for mIRC. And he has always put out an excellent program. As far as knowing he's the one doing it, just looking at the About dialog in mIRC would give you a pretty good idea considering only his face is there. You can also check out the information about mIRC in the site itself and that gives even more information about mIRC and the development of it.

As far as overloaded, I'm not sure that's really true. At least not anymore overloaded than most people who have a job. Of course, I'm not Khaled and don't really know much about his personal life.

For future reference, note that Khaled's policy on posting about bugs in this forum has always been to only post when something has been fixed for the next version or to request more information on the problem. It is rare, if ever, that he will tell you that he's looking into it (other than by asking for more information). Also, I haven't ever seen Khaled state in the forum that he "doesn't care" or that he "won't fix it". I'm sure there are things that he doesn't care about and chooses not to fix for one reason or another, but he doesn't say it in the forum. He also doesn't advertise what changes are going to be made in future versions other than the occasional "this bug has been fixed for the next version" post. Feel free to do a search for posts by Khaled to get an idea of how he works. If he had to respond to every post rather than just read through them, it would take a lot more of his time for no real benefit and would slow down his work on mIRC itself. You can be sure that he does read all bug reports, so he will read this if he hasn't already.

if he has to repley to every thread on this board , he wont have time left to code