Hi VitriolVic, the site from which you are downloading the files might not be sending a specific content type but instead a generic "binary download" content type. In that case, Firefox normally won't let you permanently associate the generic content type with a particular program. This may be difficult to diagnose from the Open/Save/Cancel dialog, but usually can be confirmed using the Network Monitor section of the developer tools.

Before going there, you may want to try the following: copy an old settings file from your "pre-Refresh" profile to your "post-Refresh" profile. The file is mimeTypes.rdf, and it stores the preferred download actions you had previously accumulated. I'm not sure how long ago "way back" was but if it wasn't that long, this might be a shortcut.

I noticed your Question Details > More System Details shows a lot of extensions. Presumably you reinstalled these after your Refresh from their original sources? If you've copied files from your old profile folder already, please don't follow the next set of steps, but pause and describe what you've done so far.

Open Your Post-Refresh Profile folder in Finder

Open the Troubleshooting Information page using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• Help menu > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter/Return

In the first table, click the "Show in Finder" button. Firefox will launch your brand new profile folder in Finder.

Leaving that folder open, switch back to Firefox, and Exit using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• (menu bar) Firefox > Quit

When Firefox closes, the profile folder should be front and center. Scroll down to the mimeTypes.rdf file and rename it to something like mimeTypes.old (in case you need to undo this change later).

Copy Old File in Place of New

Leaving that window open, open or switch over to your Old Firefox Data folder.

If you have used the Refresh feature more than once, there may be multiple folders here. If there's more than one, you'll want to work with the one that was updated most recently.

Drill down into your old profile folder and find the mimeTypes.rdf file and copy it.

Switch to the current profile folder in the other window and Paste. The pasted mimeTypes.rdf should appear below mimeTypes.old.

Then start up Firefox and see whether it recognizes how to handle ZIP and RAR files from the problem site(s). Success?

Unfortunately, I no longer have my old profile folder anymore. I threw it out as soon as I finished setting up all my add-ons, thinking I would get the option to "do this automatically next time", like I did with Mp3 files. So, I tried to replace the mimeTypes.rdf file from an old time machine back up & it didn't help either. It's strange because it did recognize an RAR file the other day from a site I always download from, but when I refreshed again, now it no longer recognizes it. It's very frustrating for a control freak like me to have to be questioned every time what to do with a file that it used to know exactly what to do with it. I'm not very computer savvy at all, but I did what you have stated from my old back up and it didn't work at all. I was wondering if there's any way to manually add content type to the applications panel list because it's not adding any of these ZIP or RAR files anymore? Like I said before, it did add the RAR file to the list upon my first refresh, but when I refreshed it again because it wouldn't add the ZIP files, now it won't add the RAR files either. If I download an older version of Firefox, might it recognize the ZIP and RAR files like it used to ? I wish I never refreshed it at all at this point because it solved my initial problem but now caused me more problems that affects me on a daily basis and may not be such a huge problem, but it is more of a time consuming inconvenience.

Your screen shot shows a problem, which is that Firefox can't match the content-type sent by the server with a specific file type or application -- it just has "Binary File".

Could you test what happens with this small zip archive:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/temp/hello.zip

My server sends the content-type "application/zip" so if you have ZIP software on your system, usually Firefox properly associates that with the application. If not, then settings might need to be added to mimeTypes.rdf (one way or another).

Thanks so much. Your ZIP file gave me the option to do this again automatically next time. Hopefully that will transfer over to any other ZIP files I download in the future. You're the best, thanks again for your time and help. :)