Lost all user names and passwords in update
Can someone please HELP!? I just updated to FF 33 (from 31.0) and lost ALL my usernames and passwords, and I can't find any articles on how to restore them. I was going to try going back to version 31, but can't even find a download for that! I probably have several hundred passwords stored and have no way of remembering them all, so I'm praying someone can offer a fix for this. I can' t even get into my email without this!
THANK YOU in advance!
All Replies (3)
Firefox 32 and later builds store the passwords in the logins.json file in the profile folder and no longer use the signons.sqlite file that has been used before (the matching key3.db file is still needed). If you still have the signons.sqlite file used in previous Firefox versions then you can try to force Firefox to migrate the passwords saved in that file (you will lose passwords saved in Firefox 32+ versions). You can force Firefox to reimport the passwords from the signons.sqlite file and rebuild the logins.json file with these steps:
- reset the signon.importedFromSqlite pref on the about:config page to the default value via the right-click context menu
- delete the logins.json file in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed
When you restart Firefox then you should have the signon.importedFromSqlite pref with the value set to true and you should have the passwords imported in the Password Manager unless there may have been errors.
You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.
Thank you so much for the quick reply. I followed your instructions, but no luck! :( Also, I noticed that the deleted login.jason file was 8 KB and the new file (after trying your fix) is 5 KB. How can there be such little difference when I had hundreds of passwords saved before and only a few now?
Any other suggestions? Can I go back to version 31.0 and possible recover that way?
Thank you.
Modified by Vicki56
Do you have a signons.sqlite file in the current profile folder?
If not then you can't restore/recover the passwords that way. If you have an "Old Firefox Data" on the desktop then you can copy the files from that folder, either the logins.json and key3.db or the ,signons.sqlite and key3.db files and make sure to remove an existing logins.json file in case of the latter.