Firefox will not open and my profile name changes, after I creat a new profile it works until I try to open again
Firefox version 16.0.2 was working I have used FF for years. A few days ago it started to run very slow opening web sites. Then this morning when I tried to open it I saw a progress bar that looked like the kind I see after an update has been applied but FF never opened. I rebooted my windows 7 64 bit and tried again, nothing FF would not open and I got no error message. So I opened the profile manager and only found a default profile not the one I created last year with my name. I created a new profile and browsed to my old profile folder. FF opened and ran fine until I closed it and later tried to open it again then I kept getting an error box telling me that FF had crashed and asked if I wanted to send a report and restart, I did but no good it still would not open. I ran the profile manager again and found my profile had changed name to a bunch of numbers. I delete that profile but kept the folder then made a new one and that worked. I shut it down again and once again I get the We're sorry error box. By the way I had set the profile manager to open when FF loads and it is not opening so the problem is before it gets to that command.
All Replies (4)
There may have been a problem with the profiles.ini file if your profile got lost.
Which security software (firewall, anti-virus) do you have?
Some security software has virtualization or sandbox features that may cause problems by protecting and restoring files in the Firefox profile folder.
Hi I did a search and I have no profiles.ini files on my windows 7 64 bit. I do find them on my windows xp computer that I am using to for this forum. Does Win 7 have an profiles.ini ? In xp there is one for both FF and TB. Maybe I need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall I will try that now. I hope the problem is not in my profile folder I don't want to have to rebuild everything.
Firefox uses the profiles.ini file to register and manage all profiles won't be able to access an existing profile without that file.
If the file isn't in the location where it should be in Windows 7 then you may have security software that is preventing the creation of .ini files.
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\
The "Application Data" folder in XP/Win2K and the "AppData" folder in Windows Vista and later Windows 7+ versions are hidden folders.
First I already have my view set to show everything so that is not the problem. But I just tried opening "Computer" from the start button then type in profiles.ini in the address bar and hit enter. The profile manager opened with my profile listed. I selected it and hit start firefox and it opened as it should. I closed it again and tried to open it from the shortcut in my task bar and I got the Sorry window. But then I tried to open it from the short cut you get when you press the start button and program list and it work! I went back to my desk top and tried the short cut on the desk top and it worked. So I deleted the short cut on the task bar and created a new one and it worked. I rebooted the computer and tried again and the task bar shortcut works and has the right profile. So it seems that the problem is that the short cut was corrupted and was causing the error that caused the program to fail to open. I had no idea a shortcut could do that. In the past I have had short cut stop working but never do what this one did. I still have no idea where the profiles.ini is.