To anyone experiencing the same or interested... I gave up. I reinstalled 54.0.1 (64 bit). Got my bookmarks back and back to FF sailing again. I also made sure my Advanced Options settings were set to prompt, but let me choose whether to install. Won't be installing FF 55 any time soon.

What I believe it came down to is that the upgrade never fully installed since the "restart to update Firefox" never really happened. Something is wrong that it will never "restart"... perhaps like a half and/or failed install? Tho I never got any error messages.

Thank you for reporting back with the additional details. Firefox not being able to see data that is clearly present in its correct location is a new one for me.

Before updating in the future, you may want to restart Windows to clear any backlog of deferred updates and unlock any locked files.

You also could download a full installer and run that (with Firefox closed) instead of having Firefox download the smaller update file. For future reference, those are here:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

But why not wait a week until the developers have had time to assess the issues experienced by the pioneers and issue any urgent fixes that might be required. (It's not unusual to have an urgent fix for a new major version.)

I'll keep that in mind for the future, jscher2000. Of course, I didn't have a choice on this run. I had it set to auto updates and it just did it on it's own when I opened the browser. As the FF 55 release notes, say "Firefox for Windows 64-bit is now installed by default on 64-bit systems with at least 2GB of RAM".

That default is now changed.... And you can bet I raced to my laptop hoping I could change that setting before it also did it to that computer.

I did archive the Troubleshooting Report as a PDF, but I don't see anything in there amiss to my non layman eye. Fact is, it just seemed stuck on need to "restart to update Firefox" much like it was an incomplete update. I would click on the "restart" button in the window. FF would go away, and return but with the same problem. No bookmarks. No ability to save a bookmark. Wouldn't even remember my browsing history. So I would again open the "about Firefox" window , and it would still say "restart to update Firefox". Rinse, repeat... spit.

I'm not going to mark this as "solved" as there was no apparent solution for the FF 55 upgrade. I see that four others also had this problem. My solution was simply going back to the earlier version. Hopefully if they discover the bug, they will post it to this thread so I can indulge in a more stable and beta tested version of 55.

But I always appreciate you weighing in. Seen your solutions many times before, and utilized them with success.

BTW, thanks for that link again. I had it in my bookmarks... not that I could get to it. LOL! FF was hanging too much for me to search for it again, so I had to use Edge to get to a full installer to save/run.

TerriF said

FF 55 (64 bit) updated on my Windows 10 desktop this AM. All bookmarks are gone. When I click on the "about", it says "Restart to Update Firefox". I do... it doesn't. Stuck on that advice perpetually no matter how many times I do, or even reboot the computer. Trying to "restore" bookmarks from "Show all bookmark/Import and Exports" shows me dates to retrieve, but when I request that to happen, says it is "unable to process the backup file". I can navigate to my AppData Mozilla Firefox Profile Bookmark Backups file and see a plethora of backup date choices, but no idea why I can't access them to restore via Import-Export. Or why it doesn't see these files. It's like I never existed... What the heck happened?? And how do I fix it please, anyone! I'd be most grateful. Oh.. I forgot to mention. FF 55 is constantly "not responding" as well. ADDED... this version which apparently isn't fully "updated" after a restart that doesn't work doesn't even retain my current history. It's like a dummy browser with a 2 second memory. I had a bookmark with older versions I could pull up to go back to an earlier version, but alas... bookmarks are gone. Clicking on the Firefox older versions doesn't tell me the 32 vs 64 bit so I haven't got a clue what I'm downloading. Any of you guru contributors out there??

I had this same problem and did a Windows Restore before the 8/7/17 update, and it successfully gave me back Version 54 with my bookmarks and history. Then I disabled automatic update. Am hoping that the Support Organization finds a fix for this, because I'm very committed to Firefox. Also, I think I'll do some backups of my profile and bookmarks.

one more question: when you type "about:profiles" into your firefox address bar what is the full path of your profile shown in the root folder column?

philipp asks: what is the full path of your profile shown in the root folder column ______________________________

Interesting you ask that since one of the fixes I had tried before throwing my hands up in the air in disgust was pouring thru some other threads, and saw the one about the "ini" extension not being in the root hidden folder. (the appdata/roaming/mozilla files, not about:config... and didn't know the about:profile trick) The instruction said to right click and edit it to change it to profile.ini. Tried that... still didn't work, and it just created another profile (w/o extension) file in addition to my originally edited profile.ini path.

Firefox still was exhibiting the same problems. So I tried a second time, and again it just created another profile w/o extension and still didn't work. I ended up editing the original back to being without the extension, becauseI didn't want to be accidentally creating new profiles.

Now, unless I did it incorrectly, that wasn't the problem. It still goes back to the same suspect. When you hit "about Firefox", it always showed that you need to restart Firefox to update. Click on the restart, Firefox goes away.. and comes back with the same problems and the same ol' "restart to update Firefox" in the about window.

Hope that helps. I'm like jrellisil above. I'm a devoted FF/Mozilla person. If I can't get the latest upgrades to work, I'll just go retrograde until the bugs are sussed out. Will not be using Chrome, Edge or other browsers. So I hope all you contributors come up with the fix. And if anyone knows it has been fixed, if you post it to this thread, I'll give it another whirl.

we got a hunch that the issue might be due to a ' in the filepath, so i was asking to confirm if this was the case for you too

Can't do it today, but perhaps tomorrow I might try to do the full install of FF 55 (not the upgrade). Now that I know how to see the root path using about:profiles (learn something new every day...), I'll save the root of my current path with 54.0.01, then compare it to the path of FF 55, and get back to you. Would that work?

no need to do that, we know that 55 at this point is still affected - you can perform the steps right now with 54.0.1 too as your profile will remain static. we're especially interested if there are any special characters or an apostrophe in the path...

philipp said

we're especially interested if there are any special characters or an apostrophe in the path...

Hmm, most of the path is standardized, so would we be focusing on the user name and profile name?

C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\abc123x9.default

vs (for example)

C:\Users\John's HP\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\abc123x9.Mary's Settings

it would cause problems anywhere in the profile path i think according to the latest comments here & here.

philipp said

no need to do that, we know that 55 at this point is still affected - you can perform the steps right now with 54.0.1 too as your profile will remain static. we're especially interested if there are any special characters or an apostrophe in the path...

If this is any assistance, here is the current root path with my FF 54.0.1, using the about:profiles function

C:\Users\T'Desktop10\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\b4ycdlxk.default-1473783410446-1502221398172

There is an apostrophe in my user/desktop name. But that has not affected prior versions. huh?

ADDED: By the way, thank you for the contributor/guru discussion link. Yes.. you can add me to those with an apostrophe in the user name. Hopefully that's narrowed it down considerably, and we FF devotees thank you all.

great, thank you for the confirmation! we're looking into how to getting this fixed now :))

phillipp said: great, thank you for the confirmation! we're looking into how to getting this fixed now :))

______________________________

Getting the notifications about FF 55.0.3 being ready. But *before* I upgraded, I checked the main page of the forum, and it looks like the same problems I experienced Aug 8th (losing all bookmarks etc above) still exist with the newest download.

What's the status with the fix? And did it have to do with an apostrophe or special character in the User Name?

Hi TerriF, do you have any non-alphabetic or accented characters in your profile path?

You can view your profile path on the About Profiles page. To open that, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

Look for the bold heading This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted. and in the table below that, the "Root Directory."

If the only special character is the apostrophe ('), that problem definitely should be fixed. Some other characters could still be a question mark.

Hi jscher2000

Yes, as I provided my profile path to phillipp above, the user name does contain an apostrophe. I'll repeat the root here for you. (there are a couple of dash marks too...)

C:\Users\T'Desktop10\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\b4ycdlxk.default-1473783410446-1502221398172

But in looking at the latest questions, I see that one user, JAMA, is experiencing the same in the past two days and that would eitiher be 55.0.2 or 55.0.3 versions, since I've been ignoring the 55.0.3 update alerts since yesterday.

Here's that thread

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1172684

That's why I'm wondering whether the core problem has been ID'd yet. After going thru it once, I think I'll wait for more debugging before I update to anything 55, as my 54.0.1 works like a champ. But if any of your FF gurus can put a notice on this thread that you think the "no bookmarks, no history, freezing etal" errors have been fixed, I'll give it a whirl. But I will be keeping my 54.0.1 handy as a just in case.