Why do the Search Engine options keep changing back?
Hi, I have a large collection of search engines, which I keep well organized with the addon Organize Search Engines. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/organize-search-engines/
I needed to make changes to many of the search engines I've added to make them work. i.e. I had to go to Manage Search Engines, right-click on the relevant engine and choose properties to change its options (just right-clicking "Add To Search Bar" on a search box won't work on a lot of web sites unless you modify the options/settings).
Anyway, the problem seems to be that after a few firefox restarts, the modified search engines seem to revert to their default values. Confusingly, it doesn't happen to all of them. Just ones I've recently added.
I've toggled the Automatically Update Search Engines in Firefox's Advanced options or the Show Search suggestions in Manage Search Engines.
I've tried re-installing firefox and putting in the new profile and re-installing the addons I use individually (although I had to copy over the extensions folder to my new profile). It didn't seem to help.
Help a brother out.
All Replies (3)
Hello ,
Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:
Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.
- Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
- After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
- Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
- Windows:
- C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
- Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
- Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
- Windows:
- Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
- Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
- Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.
More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.
WARNING:Do not use a third party uninstaller as part of this process. Doing so could permanently delete your Firefox profile data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be easily recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device! See Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.
Please report back to say if this helped you!
Thank you.
Hi, thanks for replying. sorry, that was already tried. I uninstalle and reinstalled, and then re-downloaded each addon and then copied the addon/extensions stuff from my older profile. I still had the same problem.
By default, the order of the search engine plugins is stored in a settings file named search-metadata.json in your current profile folder.
I don't know whether the "Organize Search Engines" extension integrates with that file and updates it, or whether it maintains its own settings in a different file.
Some utility programs may "clean up" Firefox settings files from time to time, such as Ccleaner and Advanced SystemCare. I have not heard that they touch the standard file, but they could touch other files, and/or it may be that other users have not reported a problem with the standard file because they are not aggressively managing the order of their search plugins.