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Firefox says: your firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

Mrs803
Mrs803
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I have a laptop that's windows 8 I have tried reinstalling and deleting firefox and nothing has worked. I can't get onto the toolbar of firefox because it will not open. There is a folder on my desktop that says old firefox data and in it are bookmarks and such is there anything in there I can click?? I have tried searching firefox.exe on my computer but nothing comes up. I have tried looking for the user profiles but nothing is working. Please help me:) thank you

I have a laptop that's windows 8 I have tried reinstalling and deleting firefox and nothing has worked. I can't get onto the toolbar of firefox because it will not open. There is a folder on my desktop that says old firefox data and in it are bookmarks and such is there anything in there I can click?? I have tried searching firefox.exe on my computer but nothing comes up. I have tried looking for the user profiles but nothing is working. Please help me:) thank you

All Replies (2)

FredMcD
FredMcD
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Hello,

Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that turns off some settings, disables most add-ons (extensions and themes).

If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:

  • In Firefox 29.0 and above, click the menu button New Fx Menu, click Help Help-29 and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
  • In previous Firefox versions, click on the Firefox button at the top left of the Firefox window and click on Help (or click on Help in the Menu bar, if you don't have a Firefox button) then click on Restart with Add-ons Disabled.

If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:

  • On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
  • On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
    (you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)

When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
Safe Mode Fx 15 - Win

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.

To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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See:

A possible/likely cause is a problem with the profiles.ini file and the profile marked as Default=1 in this file is no longer present on the hard drive.

  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can use one of these to make Firefox create/use a new default profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
  • Use "Choose Folder" when you create a new profile to select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile