After putting profile folder in trash and deleting it, I reinstall Firefox and get "profile missing or inaccessible" and cannot use firefox.
I started getting "this is embarrassing, can't find your last website" every time i started Firefox. This happened even when my Preferences said to always go to homepage. I deleted the application folder part of Firefox and re-installed. This did not work. Then I deleted the "profile folder" for firefox and then emptied the trash so I can't get it back. Now when I try to re-install Firefox, I can't access the new installation of Firefox because I always get "no profile folder exists or is inaccessible".
Chosen solution
If you go back to the location of your previous profile folder (hopefully you backed up your bookmarks at least?), and navigate up a level to the Firefox folder, you may find a text file named profiles.ini which still points to the now missing folder. To help Firefox forget about the old profile, you could try renaming or deleting this file and starting up Firefox again. Does that work?
By the way, I read in another thread that the error you were getting is caused by a bug where you quit Firefox when there are no more pages open. The workaround is to Quit with at least one page open.
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (6)
Chosen Solution
If you go back to the location of your previous profile folder (hopefully you backed up your bookmarks at least?), and navigate up a level to the Firefox folder, you may find a text file named profiles.ini which still points to the now missing folder. To help Firefox forget about the old profile, you could try renaming or deleting this file and starting up Firefox again. Does that work?
By the way, I read in another thread that the error you were getting is caused by a bug where you quit Firefox when there are no more pages open. The workaround is to Quit with at least one page open.
Do you still have a default profile and is the profile as you see in the profiles.ini file marked as "Default=1" still present?
Try to delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new profiles.ini file and a new default profile.
I did backup my bookmarks by making a folder. When i try to open the folder I get this message: There is no application set to open the document “bookmarks-2013-04-18.json”. When I do a spotlight search for the profiles.ini or Firefox folder I only get webpages and no file location. What now?
Awesome, you have a .json file. Check this article for how you restore that backup: Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer. Note the Choose File... option to navigate your system to reach that .json file.
This will replace all current bookmarks, so if you saved any recently that you really want to save, use Export (to the HTML) format so you have those for future reference.
Oh wait, are you still unable to start Firefox? Can you use the standard path information in this article to find that profiles.ini file?
- Open the Library folder for your Mac user account:
- (OS X 10.6 or previous) Click the Finder icon in the dock. Your home folder will be selected, (usually the name of your Mac user account). In the right side of the window, click the Library folder to open it.
- (OS X 10.7 or above) Click the Finder icon in the dock. On the menu bar, click the menu, hold down the option or alt key and select . A window will open containing your Library folder.
- Open the "Application Support" folder, then open the "Firefox" folder...
Source: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data
hello, jscher2000: Thank you for the replies. I did use the Finder, Library, Application Support, Firefox folder path to find what remained of the Firefox folders. I sent all those files to "Trash" but did not empty trash in case I needed them later. I was then able to open my new download of Firefox with no problem. Now I can read the article you sent me on how to deal with the "bookmarks backup folder" I made before. Thank you. I think this solves the problem.