I was on the FireFox website and "refreshed firefox" cause it said it was running slow. Now Firefox won't load because it says my profile has been lost!! HELP!
I was on firefox like normal and when I went to the homepage a little pop up on the bottom said that my firefox was running slow and that I could press cancel or go to firefox to find solutions. I went to firefox and it suggested that I refresh firefox via the blue button that was provided on the screen, so i did! It didn't take long, until there was a little pop up that said "almost finished" and it was there for about 20 minutes I started getting concerned and clicked out of it. ( i know, thats bad) NOW, i try to open firefox and it says that "Profile Missing, Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." So i freaked out and went to firefox to re-download it. I did that and the new application says the same thing! I am not able to use firefox at all! PLEASE HELP! I would like to have it be my default and redownload my "old firefox data" from the file on my desktop!
All Replies (3)
Sorry for the inconvenience and please don't panic.
Firefox's Refresh feature usually does this:
(1) Move your existing profile (settings) folder to the desktop, inside an Old Firefox Data folder.
(2) Create a new profile folder with your bookmarks and other selected data.
(3) Update Firefox's profiles.ini file with the location of the new folder so Firefox knows where to find it.
Either step 2 or step 3 probably failed.
Can you confirm you have the Old Firefox Data folder with recently updated information inside? If so, you can "roll back" the Refresh by following a multi-step procedure. It probably will take 5 minutes, but hopefully will get you back to exactly where you were.
You can find the steps in this post: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1080782#answer-774455 [Mac version]
If you do NOT have the folder described in step 1, we'll have to have you poke around on disk to track down your data.
Hello! Thank you so much for your reply!
I do have the Old Firefox Data folder on my desktop! I think your right about step 2 or 3 failing!
I will try doing the multistep procedure you posted and Ill let you know how it goes! thank you SO much! :)
You can use the Profile Manager to create a new profile.
You can copy files like these to the new Firefox profile folder to recover specific data from the "Old Firefox Data" folder on the desktop.
- bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
- bookmark backups: JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
- SQLite files like cookies.sqlite (cookies) and formhistory.sqlite (saved form data)
- logins.json and key3.db (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
- cert8.db for stored intermediate certificates (Certificate Manager)
- persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
- permissions.sqlite and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for Permissions and Site Preferences
- sessionstore.js for open tabs and pinned tabs and tab groups