What sort of things have you lost ? I am not sure I understand what is meant by updates settings. Are you saying Firefox updated unexpectedly ? You were trying to prevent that for some reason ?

Firefox tries to preserve settings when updating. It should for instance keep nearly all settings, extensions, bookmarks, history & passwords etc. It should also retain any open tabs (May not always work,I have sometimes lost open tabs)

See:

• Tools > Options > General > Startup: Home page
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/How+to+set+the+home+page

See this article about the New Tab page (about:newtab):

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/new-tab-page-show-hide-and-customize-top-sites

I know this happens, because it happen to me. After an update, I could not get on the web. It turns out, something changed my proxy.

eliazer, what changed on your system?

Thanks for responding - the last time it updated, before this time - it asked me to set the tab (s) that opens upon starting (start pages) as well as some shuffled tabs so that one of my favorites would show up at the beginning of every day. It was crazy to set up and now it is gone? Which is fine - now I have a much cleaner beginning to every day. After posting this, I reset the view so I could see the menu tool bar and now can set up my start page as I wish it to be. I appreciate all the helpful suggestions.

That was very good work. Well Done.

These add-ons can be a great help by backing up and restoring Firefox

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) {web link} FEBE allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions, history, passwords, and more. In fact, it goes beyond just backing up -- It will actually rebuild your saved files individually into installable .xpi files. It will also make backup of files that you choose.

OPIE {web link} Import/Export extension preferences