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Win XP-"your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible". I have uninstalled & reinstalled 3 times. No success. Help!

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  • 23 masɔmasɔ sia le wosi
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Today, Firefox wouldn't open properly. I got a msg about opening in safe mode or another option. My XP system froze so I closed Firefox down through Task Manager. When I tried to reopen I got the ..profile can't be loaded message. I uninstalled & reinstalled Firefox and still received the ...profile can't be loaded message and I'm unable to open Firefox. I repeated the uninstall/reinstall 3 times, without success. Same message appears.

I found my profile folder in my system but I don't know what to do with it. How do I tell Firefox where to look for the folder when I can't even open Firefox? Do I copy & move it somewhere else? Should I just delete it all together and do another uninstall/reinstall of Firefox?

I would hate to have to use IE. I use a crappy old Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4 and, until today, I was running Firefox for 18 months. Please help. I know a bit about computers but I'm nowhere near being a techy person.

Today, Firefox wouldn't open properly. I got a msg about opening in safe mode or another option. My XP system froze so I closed Firefox down through Task Manager. When I tried to reopen I got the ..profile can't be loaded message. I uninstalled & reinstalled Firefox and still received the ...profile can't be loaded message and I'm unable to open Firefox. I repeated the uninstall/reinstall 3 times, without success. Same message appears. I found my profile folder in my system but I don't know what to do with it. How do I tell Firefox where to look for the folder when I can't even open Firefox? Do I copy & move it somewhere else? Should I just delete it all together and do another uninstall/reinstall of Firefox? I would hate to have to use IE. I use a crappy old Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4 and, until today, I was running Firefox for 18 months. Please help. I know a bit about computers but I'm nowhere near being a techy person.

All Replies (2)

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Try to delete the profiles.ini file, so Firefox will try to make a new one.

To do so:

1. Click on Start > Run... (or press Win key + R) 2. Type %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox 3. Press OK. 4. Delete the profiles.ini file or rename it to any other name. 5. Try to boot Firefox again.

Warning: if you delete profiles.ini file a new profile will be made. You will lose all your themes, extensions, preferences, bookmarks, history and navigation data.

You can try also to perform a disk check to make sure files are not corrupted. To do so, open a command line and type chkdsk X: /F /R where X: is the letter of the drive where Firefox is installed. In the case you're asked to reboot, do it.

In the case this doesn't work, please leave us feedack, and we'll find out another possible solution.

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If there are still existing profiles then you can either use the Choose Folder button in the Profile Manager to recover a missing profile or create a new profile and copy files from a previous profile to the new profile.