It's late and I'm tired; Firefox updated itself; offered to import settings; I said no -- didn't want to add anything; lost years of settings; can I recover?
Windows 7, 64-bit. Firefox seems to have performed an automatic update. I was not expecting it -- late at night and sleepy -- and at Firefox startup was confronted with a do-you-want-to-import-bookmarks question, if memory serves. The first option was to import from I.E. and I leaped to a conclusion that I should just say no to importing altogether, that then Firefox would keep my old profile. It seems that I was gravely mistaken, and have lost at least 2 years of settings. There only seems to be the default profile in the profiles folder. This is a royal pain in the ass. If there is a solution, I'd appreciate a pointer. If not, then the update process seriously needs to be reworked to either save old profiles or not default to data loss. Really crappy way to end my day. String of curse words deleted here.
Additional System Details
Installed Plug-ins
- Google Update
- Shockwave Flash 11.6 r602
- Adobe PDF Plug-In For Firefox and Netscape 10.1.5
- iTunes Detector Plug-in
- RealJukebox Netscape Plugin
- RealNetworks(tm) RealPlayer Chrome Background Extension Plug-In
- RealPlayer(tm) HTML5VideoShim Plug-In
- RealPlayer(tm) LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In
- RealPlayer Download Plugin
- Next Generation Java Plug-in 1.6.0_37 for Mozilla browsers
- NPRuntime Script Plug-in Library for Java(TM) Deploy
- The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.
- 4.1.10329.0
- NPWLPG
- GEPlugin
- Adobe Shockwave for Director Netscape plug-in, version 11.5.8.612
- The Hulu Desktop Plugin allows Hulu.com to integrate with the Hulu Desktop application.
- np-mswmp
Application
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0
More Information
That's odd, as a Firefox update won't ask you to re-import from IE. You sure you didn't accidentally Reset Firefox?
Does Recover lost or missing Bookmarks help?
Question owner
I did nothing to intentionally cause a reset, nor did Firefox suggest it as an option. I'm sure this is a different version than the last one I was using; the menu bar has collapsed into a single Firefox button, and I don't recall seeing that on any previous version I've used -- it's very post-Windows-7-ish. I'm stumped. And rather depressed, frankly.
The import wizard starts if the profiles.ini is missing.
You can check if you still have your previous profile folder.
See also:
Question owner
Oh, and there is no recent backup to recover -- haven't done a profile backup in a long long time. It will be my last resort, but that means pulling it from an old computer not currently in use, and missing the last two years of changes. I suppose it's not the worst thing to have neglected backing up... but it aint pleasant either.
Question owner
Again, the default profile is the only one in the profiles folder. So unless somebody is aware of a door-number-two, there is no profile to recover on this machine. I seriously don't know what I could have done that would have resulted in such a loss unless this is an uncharacteristic instance of Firefox making unintuitive assumptions. This would be the first time it has really let me down.
Do you have an Old Firefox Data folder on the desktop?
If you're using Windows 7, you MAY be able to restore via System Restore or Volume Shadow Copy. Do you have any folders inside %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles?
Question owner
There is just one folder in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles -- titled "nuxqpx4s.default" -- which I assume is the default profile.
@shifuiman, System restore doesn't restore data files like a Firefox profile, however volume shadow copies (if you have it turned on) may
You can try an undelete utility like Recuva.
- Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva
Question owner
I'm unfamiliar with VSS -- just began google research -- which I suspect would imply that I DON'T have it turned on, unless that is a default state.
Question owner
cor-el, I was excited to try Recuva. It didn't find anything immediately, so I'll try a "deep scan." Time I went to sleep anyway, so maybe I'll wake up to a welcome surprise. (It's 3:17am here in Korea.) Thanks all. Cross your fingers for me... unless you're typing, of course. 'Night.