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Help I broke firefox

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  • Last reply by MrMoon

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I started up my computer (Windows XP) and went to open Firefox. I got the message prompting me to choose between Safe Mode or restarting Firefox entirely. I picked the second one and it started backing up my data. After a minute I figured it was stuck, so like the impatient little dork I am I closed the back-up. When I went to start up Firefox I got an error message that reads: "Profile Missing: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccesable." Clicking "Okay" leads to... nothing. Trying to start up Firefox after that just gives me the error message and then still nothing. I restarted and the problem persisted. I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it and the problem's still here. I'm using the most recent version of Firefox. Please help, I'm stuck with an old version of IE.

I started up my computer (Windows XP) and went to open Firefox. I got the message prompting me to choose between Safe Mode or restarting Firefox entirely. I picked the second one and it started backing up my data. After a minute I figured it was stuck, so like the impatient little dork I am I closed the back-up. When I went to start up Firefox I got an error message that reads: "Profile Missing: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccesable." Clicking "Okay" leads to... nothing. Trying to start up Firefox after that just gives me the error message and then still nothing. I restarted and the problem persisted. I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it and the problem's still here. I'm using the most recent version of Firefox. Please help, I'm stuck with an old version of IE.

Chosen solution

Do you mean this notification: "Mozilla Firefox seems slow… to… start."


Do you still have the original profile folder in the the default location or has this folder already be moved to the desktop as "Old Firefox Data"?

A likely cause is a problem with the profiles.ini file and the profile marked as Default=1 in this file is no longer present on the hard drive.

  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can use one of these to make Firefox create/use a new default profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
  • Use "Choose Folder" when you create a new profile to select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)

You can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem

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Go to Mozilla.org, and download the Full installer.

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Chosen Solution

Do you mean this notification: "Mozilla Firefox seems slow… to… start."


Do you still have the original profile folder in the the default location or has this folder already be moved to the desktop as "Old Firefox Data"?

A likely cause is a problem with the profiles.ini file and the profile marked as Default=1 in this file is no longer present on the hard drive.

  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can use one of these to make Firefox create/use a new default profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
  • Use "Choose Folder" when you create a new profile to select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)

You can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over the problem

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Cor-el: That first link helped me fix the problem, thanks so much! oh my lovely bookmarks how I missed you