I have found my profile and changed its property from read only. I opened it and found a folder "bookmark backups" but now I need to know how to recover those bookmarks and distribute them among the browsers - I have installed Opera as I have been unable to use Firefox.

Restore Bookmark Backups

Firefox automatically makes backups of the bookmarks. These are stored in the bookmarkbackups folder.

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Restore. From the list, pick the file you want and click it.

The backups are stored in a jsonlz4 file named something like this; bookmarks-2016-06-29_1424_enD1GTH ya0JmicnYWg4V4g==.jsonlz4

In this example; 2016-06-29 = date created, 1424 = number of entries.

These instructions are for Firefox. These instructions will combine the new bookmarks with the old.

Open the Bookmarks Manager; Press the Alt or F10 key to bring up the toolbar, and select Bookmarks. Hot key is <Control> (Mac=<Command>) <Shift> B.

Once the window is open, at the top of the page, press the button labeled Import and Backup. Select Export Bookmarks To HTML, and follow the prompts and save it to a HTML file. Copy the file to another computer. Repeat the instructions above, BUT select Import Bookmarks From HTML.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recover-lost-or-missing-bookmarks

This presupposes that Firefox is up and running, which is not the case. I have given up on Firefox.

Same old same old - firefox.exe listed in processes, but no application opens. I really have given up trying.

Hi, I've understood you had a running Firefox but it does not work anymore. As suggest previously, I think the problem is related to profile data. Can you read this short article about managing profile to create a new one and start Firefox? It may work. Again, warning with Windows XP and Firefox its no longer support in the last version.