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Back up profile contents copied. Profile contents not seen by firefox

TheLawnStink
TheLawnStink
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I recently had the joy of having my laptop's hard drive break. I have all my stuff backed up (including my firefox profile) and now I have Windows 10 re-installed on a new internal drive. So I read the instructions on the Mozilla site on how to import a profile but it isn't working. What I backed up was the whole profile from my old drive, and before putting the contents of that folder in a newly-created profile, or the one generated by default after installing firefox (I've tried both), I have made sure to delete everything in the existing profile folder I am copying the backup contents to.

I am also making sure not to start firefox before everything has finished copying.

However, when I start firefox after putting the contents of the backup in the new profile, none of the back up seems to be there. It loads as if I did nothing to the profile folder. None of my bookmarks, saved passwords, history, cookies, or anything is visible to firefox. I checked profiles.ini and everything matches, and even if there's only 1 profile folder, and it's got my backup in it, it still can't see the backup contents.

Is there something I'm not looking at? Please keep in mind I am following this to the T: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

I recently had the joy of having my laptop's hard drive break. I have all my stuff backed up (including my firefox profile) and now I have Windows 10 re-installed on a new internal drive. So I read the instructions on the Mozilla site on how to import a profile but it isn't working. What I backed up was the whole profile from my old drive, and before putting the contents of that folder in a newly-created profile, or the one generated by default after installing firefox (I've tried both), I have made sure to delete everything in the existing profile folder I am copying the backup contents to. I am also making sure not to start firefox before everything has finished copying. However, when I start firefox after putting the contents of the backup in the new profile, none of the back up seems to be there. It loads as if I did nothing to the profile folder. None of my bookmarks, saved passwords, history, cookies, or anything is visible to firefox. I checked profiles.ini and everything matches, and even if there's only 1 profile folder, and it's got my backup in it, it still can't see the backup contents. Is there something I'm not looking at? Please keep in mind I am following this to the T: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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How many profile folders do you have in the default location? To open that, you can copy/paste the following shortcut into the Windows search box and press Enter to load it: 

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Normally a new installation will have at least one. Did you add a second one here?

One level up from that, in 

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\

The Profiles.ini file informs Firefox of the profile to use. If you copied in an entire profile folder (having, of course, a name unknown to this installation of Firefox), that file would need to be updated.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Actually, to switch the default profile, it's probably easiest to use the Profile Manager. Simply choose the migrated profile and start Firefox there, and that will become the new default profile. See: Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles. (I suggest NOT deleting anything in the Profile Manager, as it's a bit too easy to delete the wrong profile.)