Trying to transfer my old Firefox setup from a dead Windows 7 PC to a new Windows 10 PC (Old HDD is intact).
Ok so this really has me pulling my hair out. My old laptop died the other day and so I bought a new one and put my old drive in an enclosure. I had my Firefox heavily customised (over the past eight years) and I don't know how to transfer it over. It used to be that I would just copy the users over and everything would be cool (XP to W7 didn't give me this problem) but it's not working this time. My guess is that it's because my old laptop used Windows 7 Ultimate x64. My desktop monster uses Windows 10 Pro but this new laptop uses Windows 10 Home (which is just awful compared to Pro) so there's probably an issue with how the user profiles are handled. I didn't have a Firefox account because I didn't want every machine I use to have the same Firefox setup. This was because my desktop and laptop are used for different purposes entirely.
Does anyone know how to import the settings from a Windows 7 profile to a Windows 10 profile? So far, I've had no luck whatsoever. Thanks!
All Replies (5)
Your old profile information should be stored in the C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles folder on your old drive. You can copy what you need from there into whatever new profile Firefox made for you on your new Windows 10 computer.
Hope this helps.
You can copy specific files with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover personal data.
- 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 (passwords) and key4.db (58+) or key3.db (57 and older) (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
if you only have key3.db then make sure to remove an existing key4.db - cert9.db (58+) or cert8.db (57 and older) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
if you only have cert8.db then make sure to remove an existing cert9.db - persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling 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)
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>\
Wesley Branton said
Your old profile information should be stored in the C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles folder on your old drive. You can copy what you need from there into whatever new profile Firefox made for you on your new Windows 10 computer.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for your answer Wesley, it is much appreciated.
What you describe is actually what I tried to do initially but it seems that Windows 10 doesn't handle users the same way that XP and Windows 7 did, at least, not the profiles. It had no effect whatsoever and I was completely shocked by this. I expected that to work. I've even tried completely replacing the AppData folder and still nothing happened. That's when I posted my question. I guess that you can see why I'm going out of my skull with this.
cor-el said
You can copy specific files with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover personal data.Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).
- 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 (passwords) and key4.db (58+) or key3.db (57 and older) (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
if you only have key3.db then make sure to remove an existing key4.db- cert9.db (58+) or cert8.db (57 and older) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
if you only have cert8.db then make sure to remove an existing cert9.db- persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling 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)
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
Thank you for your suggestions Cor-el. I will attempt them tonight. I'm at work right now so I won't be able to try your solution for a few hours still but your knowledge of the exact filenames gives me a lot of hope. It's been a pretty stressful experience because 8 years ago, a quad-core laptop cost $500 and now it costs 50% at $750. So much for technolgy getting cheaper over time, eh? LOL
When you copied your data over, did you copy over the profile folder itself (usually named like RANDOM_CHARACTERS.default) or did you copy the files within that folder to the folder that was already on your Windows 10?
If you copy the whole folder, Firefox will have no idea that the folder exists.