Can only run firefox as administrator?
Hi Guys,
Last hope for me now. Ever since upgrading from Windows 7 -> Windows 10 i have had this very annoying problem that I can not fix. I can only get firefox to run if I run it as administrator. When I just click on it to run it normal I always get an error saying that "Your firefox profile can not be read. It can not be found or is not accessable"(translated from Danish).
I have tried EVERYTHING i can find about this error. I re-installed firefox 10+ times, I have deleted profil.ini. I have tried to create a new profile with the profile manager(which also can only be run as administrator). I tried to reset firefox from the help menu, and anything else I have read or can think of. And nothing works. Besides the error message does not really seems to give much sense, since the Firefox profile is there where it should be, or I wouldn't be able to run it as administrator right?
Only thing I have not been able to test yet, is that I can see the the profile files and directories are read only. Are they supposed to be that? Or can that be the problem? But I am not allowed to change it seems. Whenever I un-click the read-only and saves, it just stays read-only anyway.
So last hope. Is there any of you gurus here that can tell me why I can not run Firefox normally like I could when I had windows 7? I do not have this problem with any other browsers, but I would really like to be able to use firefox again.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide :)
All Replies (4)
NO files used by Firefox should be 'read-only.' This will interfere with the browser.
Turn off read-only and let us know how it goes.
The folder Profiles under Mozilla/Firefox are read-only every time I install firefox.
I can not change it from read only. Everytime I change it, it just goes right back to being read only. Something is preventing me from changing it from read-only. I tried to turn off my firewall, before changing it, but still just continue to be read only.
Shut down Firefox. Using your file browser, open the Programs Folder on your computer.
Windows: C:\Program Files C:\Program Files (x86)
Right click on Firefox.exe and select Properties. Now select Compatibility. Turn Off Run This Program In Compatibility Mode, and Run This Program As An Administrator.
Do the same for any Firefox shortcuts you have. Now restart Firefox.
Note that Windows shows a green block in the Read-only box for folders, but not a check-mark. Only a check mark in the Read-only box means that a folder or file is Read-only. Windows doesn't check all the files in a folder, so instead displays a green block to indicate that it is not sure. You can look at each file individually to see if any are read-only. Easiest to do that is to make the Attributes visible in "View > Details" mode: Choose Details in Windows File Explorer.
Did you check ownership of the files and folders?
Try to rename the Mozilla\Firefox folder in both locations.
Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder. Location used for the main profile in "AppData\Roaming" that keeps your personal data.
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files in "AppData\Local".
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\