Never post any personal information because an adware robot could find it, and start sending you all kinds of spam. This includes e-mail, phone, and home information.

Please remove that information from your post.

This sounds like you are talking about the Firefox user's profile. Not the program. Is this correct?
Does an update create a new user profile? When did this start?
Did you let Firefox do the update or did you download the installer?

It may well be the user profile. I have no idea. This started about two weeks ago.

I did not download the installer. It just asked me to update, which I have in the past always done and it did not install a new copy. At least that is what I remember.

The original copy is in "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" while at least one new copy is in ThisPC>OS(c:)>Users>me>Appdata>Local>Mozilla Firefox

Yes the .exe is there, which seems bizarre. The whole affair is bizarre. I can uninstall that one and it reappears at the next attempted update.

When I go to change which one is the on used when I doubl;e click an HTML file on my hard disk, I see three of them. Only one is the old one with the "data" of all my bookmakrs. etc.

Using the other one(s) results in it asking me if I want to make that my default browser and also whether I want to generate an account to "sync", which I don't.

There are only two places the program should be placed by the installer:

•"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\" •"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"

c:>Users>me>Appdata>Local>

would be where the profile folder is located.

Did you install using the default or did you do it manually?

Open your file browser. Starting from the root directory C:\
search for Firefox.exe and post a copy of their locations.

I attach a screen shot of the search for firefox.exe. Its clear they were installed today. At that time I did not say "install". I thought I was doing a regular update. Firefox asked me to do something I understood as an update. I later discovered that the regular install I normally use was set for automatic updates. I later than that set all of the ones that ran to not do auto updates or what I remember as background updates ( a checkbox lower in the page than setting auto or manual updates.)

These two new instances apparently do not appear in the "apps" section of control panel. One, the one in AppData, does appear in the Windows Start menu.

All three appear when I go to the place where you set which app opens when you double click a local HTML file in file explorer.

I found several odd profiles in the place where the profiles are supposed to be. There is the main one that I use, called default. One is called dev-edition-default, another default-release and the last default-release-1

I did install developer's edition long ago but uninstalled it long ago also. Should I uninstall the unwanted whole installations? Windows "apps" in settings does not have uninstall for them. They appear to be complete installs complete with "uninstall" directories. I can of course delete the undesired files, but that can cause problems.

But how do I do what I need to to keep them gone? I can of course get rid of the install files in the downloads directory. I don't recall how they got there.

I do seem to have them deactivated as the thing to run when double-clicking an html local file (something I do a very lot). But one may still be set as default when double-clicking some other files, such as pdf, only time will tell.

If you want to reinstall Firefox, follow the instructions below.
If you just want to remove it, disregard the install instructions.

Let’s do a full clean re-install;

Note: Firefox comes in three or more folders on all computers. They are;

Maintenance: (Programs Folder) <Windows Only>
Firefox itself: (Programs Folder)
And two folders in the profile of each user on the computer for each Firefox profile for that user.

If you remove the Firefox folder, the user profiles would not be affected.

Download Firefox For All languages And Systems {web link}

Save the file. Then Close Firefox.

Using your file browser, open the Programs Folder on your computer.

Windows: C:\Program Files
C:\Program Files (x86) Note: Check Both Folders

Also remove c:>Users>me>Appdata>Local>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Look for, and remove any Mozilla or Firefox program folders.
Do not remove the Mozilla Thunderbird folder if there is one.

Do Not remove any profile folders.

After rebooting the computer, run a registry scanner
if you have one. Then run the installer.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If there is a problem, start your Computer in safe mode and try again.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Linux+Safe+Mode
This shows how to Start all Computers in Safe Mode; Free Online Encyclopedia

I removed the directories involving the two unwanted copies, and most of the references to them in the registry (after backing it up).

However some remain, see screen copies in pictures

Should I remove the entries in those to the bogus versions?

The main version still works.

Also remove c:>Users>me>Appdata>Local>
Look for, and remove any Mozilla or Firefox program folders.
Do not remove the Mozilla Thunderbird folder if there is one.

Do Not remove any profile folders.

After rebooting the computer, run a registry scanner
if you have one. Then run the installer.

Your \users\ folder screenshot shows 2 copies of the Firefox Installer.exe of 313kb file which is the "stub installation" file for in-direct installation of the Firefox installation via a remote server that Mozilla uses. And note the capital F & I and space between the words Firefox & Installer; where firefox.exe in the Program Files (86) folder is all lower case and a larger file size @ 567kb, although the average user wouldn't know what the firefox.exe file size would actually be. In Windows an application .exe file has no spaces or it wouldn't work to launch an application; gotta know that before delving into the Windows Registry, which I learned like 20 years the 'hard way'.

" In Windows an application .exe file has no spaces or it wouldn't work to launch an application;"

really? I just tried changing a filename to one with a random space and it worked fine.

In any case, all seems working OK now. I just need to know whether is all right, or even important to, delete those registry entries I listed above.