Work recently blocked GAIM (which is now called Pidgin), amongst other IM clients people had been happily using.
As this had been my work account I had custom Alias’s setup to everyones name to make it easier to find people, and while the user contacts are kept on the MSN server, the alias’s aren’t, and you have to manually copy the files across.
Under XP the config files are usually kept under :
C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\.gaim
or %userprofile%\Application Data\.purple for Pidgin
Note : Replace <USERNAME> with your Windows login username, or use %userprofile%
The blist.xml file contains the buddy information (and the Alias’s), and the other .xml files contain your preferences, account settings, buddy pounces, etc… You’ll also find your GAIM or Pidgin logs in the aptly named logs directory, and any custom smileys and icons in the other directories.
Personally I copied all these over to a portable 120Gb HDD which I had installed portable GAIM on (which didn’t get around the application blocking, but still allows me to log in to MSN at home, etc..)
Example of where the settings were on my portable app’s drive (replace E:\ with the correct drive letter).
E:\PortableApps\GaimPortable\Data\settings\.gaim
I hope some of this is useful to other people as I couldn’t find much info online regarding the file paths under XP.
Feel free to comment if you’ve found this useful, or found the files in places different to the above :D
