Windows 10 reached EOS (end of support) on October 14, 2025. For more information, see this article.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

firefox won't start: profile can't be loaded--missing or inaccessible

  • 1 reply
  • 4 have this problem
  • 24 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

bodanyliuk
bodanyliuk
more options

firefox won't start--have had problems for months with certain sites (secure banking and insurance sites) had to reset firefox several times to access sites. Happened again yesterday: reset and then couldn't load firefox with the above error meassages--tried solutions posted-nothing worked. Hate ie and chrome and your customer support has been very weak. Have a nice day.

firefox won't start--have had problems for months with certain sites (secure banking and insurance sites) had to reset firefox several times to access sites. Happened again yesterday: reset and then couldn't load firefox with the above error meassages--tried solutions posted-nothing worked. Hate ie and chrome and your customer support has been very weak. Have a nice day.

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
more options

A possible 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/
  • 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" to recover an existing profile if there is still one present