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Recover securely generated passwords after uninstalling

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by bohocrow

bohocrow
bohocrow
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Hello, Our desktop computer's hard drive recently went bad. In the process of diagnosing the hard drive failure, my partner uninstalled our Firefox browser. The account had several securely generated passwords connected to important email accounts that we had not written down. We have had a new hard drive installed, and a fresh copy of Windows 7 pro (we know, it's old and unsupported, but my husband likes it and it works fine for his needs). Our service person was able to save a lot of data from the old hard drive, but we're puzzled as to if we can still access the Firefox account having the necessary passwords. We have also acquired a laptop that runs Windows 10, and our service person transferred the old data onto it and also gave us the old hard drive for safekeeping. Both the desktop and the laptop have a .JSON file folder of bookmarks from the old hard drive. Any hope for password recovery? Thanks.

Hello, Our desktop computer's hard drive recently went bad. In the process of diagnosing the hard drive failure, my partner uninstalled our Firefox browser. The account had several securely generated passwords connected to important email accounts that we had not written down. We have had a new hard drive installed, and a fresh copy of Windows 7 pro (we know, it's old and unsupported, but my husband likes it and it works fine for his needs). Our service person was able to save a lot of data from the old hard drive, but we're puzzled as to if we can still access the Firefox account having the necessary passwords. We have also acquired a laptop that runs Windows 10, and our service person transferred the old data onto it and also gave us the old hard drive for safekeeping. Both the desktop and the laptop have a .JSON file folder of bookmarks from the old hard drive. Any hope for password recovery? Thanks.

All Replies (3)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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For the logins (username and password) you need logins.json and key4.db from the profile folder on the old hard drive.

Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>

Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files (Local Directory on about:profiles).

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>

You can copy certain files with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to transfer or recover personal data. Note that best is to avoid copying a full profile folder.

  • bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
  • favicons: favicons.sqlite
  • bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
  • cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
  • formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
  • logins.json (encrypted logins;32+) and key4.db (decryption key;58+) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
    key3.db support ended in 73+; to use key3.db in 58-72, make sure to remove key4.db
  • cert9.db (58+) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
  • persdict.dat for words added to the spell checker dictionary
  • permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)
bohocrow
bohocrow Question owner
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Thanks. I will take the old hard drive to our service person. I'm sure he can do this for us.

bohocrow
bohocrow Question owner
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Will let you know what happens. =)