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I cannot open a firefox browser on my computer.

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Every time I try to open Mozilla Firefox, an error text box appears. It says, "Profile Missing: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I tried reinstalling Firefox, but I do not know how to fix the problem.

Every time I try to open Mozilla Firefox, an error text box appears. It says, "Profile Missing: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I tried reinstalling Firefox, but I do not know how to fix the problem.

All Replies (2)

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Here is a picture of the error message.

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You need to locate the profiles.ini file or use the Profile Manager to create a new profile.

See:


This is usually caused by a problem with the profiles.ini file.

You can use one of these to make Firefox create a new default profile or reuse an existing profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
    If you still have an existing profile then click "Choose Folder" in the PM and select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile.

You should find the profiles.ini file in this hidden location:

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

If clearing the profiles.ini file isn't working then also check the location of the cache files.

  • Windows: *C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/
  • Linux:~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/