Hi VancouverSouthpaw, let me ask you a couple follow-up questions:

I seem to need to refresh Firefox every couple of weeks. This time two things happened (besides the usual irritating loss of preset passwords):

These problems started AFTER the refresh, or is this why you need to refresh? Could you describe the problem with losing passwords in more detail?

1) I can no longer do any sort of web searches, despite having gone into settings and added the search toolbar and re-chosen Google as the default search engine.

What happens when you try to search? Do you get a blank page, no results, wrong search site, etc.?

2) There was a distracting exclamation mark in the top right corner prompting me to log in and sync with something I have no need or desire to sync with. I followed it through but have no idea what really happened.

If you do not want to use Sync, you can disconnect Firefox from the service on the Options page.

• Windows: "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options
• Mac: "3-bar" menu button (or Firefox menu) > Preferences
• Linux: "3-bar" menu button (or Edit menu) > Preferences
• Any system: type or paste about:preferences into the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it

In the left column, click Firefox Account. Here you can disconnect from Sync. But how did it get set up the first place? Do you share your computer with anyone else?

Thanks for the quick response.

I seem have solved the search problem by closing and reopening Firefox, which I thought of before but didn't do for some reason (insert embarassed emoji here). Previously, I would type something in the search bar, hit return and nothing at all would happen.

I did a refresh because certain web pages, primarily one that is an internal back-end to the inventory system in my record shop, will suddenly fail to load at all, just showing a blank screen, until a refresh is done. Closing/opening Firefox and restarting the computer don't make any difference to this.

After a refresh, saved passwords and login info for supplier and other websites are gone completely and needs to be re-entered and re-saved, and it seems to take a couple of rounds of doing that for the same site to get it to work. (Yet another side issue: I can't update passwords that have changed, Firefox asks if I want it to remember the updated password, but it never does remember it, always have to manually re-enter each time...this has been going on for a long time but I just put up with it)

I've gone into Options and unchecked all the Sync boxes so that should take care of that problem, thanks.

When the internal page goes sideways, could you test accessing it in a private window? If your server uses NTLM authentication, that's painful, but if not, the private window would quickly bypass cache and cookies to help in assessing whether those are causing the problem.

Regarding saved logins, I thought Refresh preserved those. ?? I don't use the built-in password manager for website logins except for testing purposes, so I don't know about editing passwords other than by going directly to the Options page and doing it there.

Thanks for the additional suggestion regarding test accessing in a private window. I'll try and remember to do that next time it goes sideways.

I also thought Refresh preserved logins but my consistent experience is that it does not.

Thanks again!