The windows clients used by BMW have a netscape registry
(C:\WinNT\nsreg.dat) which cannot be read properly by the Java
plug-in.

The problem shows up with plug-in versions 1.3.x and higher (1.4.x
beta also shows the problem). The version of Netscape is 4.72 (maybe
others as well).

Please be sure that we n e e d to use Netscape 4.72 at
the moment since our company has at about 3000 Windows-NT-
Clients running with this version. Anyway I've tested 4.77 and also could reproduce the error.

Report from the Java Plugin Taem:

nsreg.dat is not directly read by the plugin. We use javascript to ask
Netscape for the proxy settings. I imagine that netscape then consults
nsreg.dat for the information, or just looks in memory somewhere. We
do not know the internal workings of Netscape and how it organizes and
reports the current proxy settings. It could be that the browser gets
out of sync with it's own registry file, which as you say looks good
when viewed externally. We only noticed that forcing Netscape to
rebuild this registry data file causes it to start responding to our
javascript calls for proxy info. This is definitely a netscape bug
which we have no way to effect a fix.


Test case:

nsreg.dat attached.

> Netscape 4.72 is required
> ##########################################################################
> 1) make a backup copy of your local Netscape registry file
> C:\WINNT\nsreg.dat
>
> 2) manually create the directory C:\Config\netscape\4.
>
> 3) manually copy all files and subdirectories within the
> directory where your personal Netscape profile data is stored
> into this new directory.
>
> If you don't know where your personal Netscape profile data is
> loceted just execute the small tool
> "queryNsreg.exe" with command option "print_profiles".
>
> 4) replace your local Netscape registry file C:\WINNT\nsreg.dat with the
> attached one.
>
> 5) Start Netscape and type in the URL of an applet which uses the
> Netscape Java Plug-in (! not the built-in Netscape default JVM).
> If you do not have access to such an Applet just take the nice
> test applet I've also attached to this mail.
> ##########################################################################
>
> To restore your netscape configuration just replace C:\WINNT\nsreg.dat
> with your personal backup copy made during step 1.