"Profile Missing" - How can I recover Firefox if the profile manager won't open?
I reset my launch services last night to solve another issue (it worked) and now I get "PROFILE MISSING. Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."
I've read dozens of forums with SIMILAR issues.
I've deleted/renamed my profile here: Users/{username}/Library/Application Support/Firefox.profiles.ini (did not seem to generate new profiles at the time)
I've restarted computer and repaired permissions
Wiped out Firefox with App Cleaner, restarted, reinstalled fresh copy
Downloaded Mozilla's Profile Manager (but get the same error when trying to launch it).
I've logged out of my current user and logged in with another profile with admin access, and it would at least open there.
I'm on a macOS High Sierra 10.13.4
Any thoughts or follow up questions would be MUCH appreciated.
Best,
Farmer
Modified by sgtfarmer
Chosen solution
jscher2000 said
...the solution was to repair MacOS user permissions that were interfering with Firefox's access to the profiles folder...
As it turns out I found a simple way to terminal into the repair permissions process without having to go into safe mode.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538
This did what Onyx was not able to do.
Thank you!!!
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (6)
Please see if you have a 2 Profiles :
If there is : you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem. Never work with original files.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
Thank you Pkshadow. I only see one profiles.ini file and only one Profiles folder. The Firefox folder looks like this:
Crash Reports Pending Pings Profiles profiles.ini
My understanding was that deleting or renaming the profiles.ini file would prompt Firefox to make a new one, but I only get that error message.
+Farmer
Could you also check these threads. In every case, the solution was to repair MacOS user permissions that were interfering with Firefox's access to the profiles folder:
Sorry, forgot to mention, there is another thing you could do to check whether it is a permissions issue, other than your Admin test. Try calling up the Profile Manager from terminal using
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -P
and see whether you get this in the console window (it doesn't show in the popup):
Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory
jscher2000 said
...Try calling up the Profile Manager from terminal using /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -P and see whether you get this in the console window (it doesn't show in the popup): Error: Access was denied while trying to open files in your profile directory
That's exactly the text displayed in Terminal after running that command. I've read through those other forums and have prepared permissions through Onyx. The safe mode / terminal repair procedure looked pretty hairy so I hadn't tried that up to now. But if it's different than what Onyx can accomplish, I'm down to test.
Thanks for your suggestions, appreciating the support.
+Farmer
Chosen Solution
jscher2000 said
...the solution was to repair MacOS user permissions that were interfering with Firefox's access to the profiles folder...
As it turns out I found a simple way to terminal into the repair permissions process without having to go into safe mode.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538
This did what Onyx was not able to do.
Thank you!!!