Just a suspicion, but it sounds like your signons.sqlite (or one of the other of those files??) has somehow become read-only. Have you checked for that? Right-click on a file and select "Properties" and it should show whether or not that's the case.

Does not appear to be a problem. I even wrote a Perl script to recursively go down my 'Application Data' tree to see what files were read-only and none were in the Firefox tree (all were in M$/Installer dir). But checking the Firefox dir Properties shows a grayed out Read-only checkmark which I can't clear, but the same is true for most dirs in the tree - I clear it and it iterates down the tree and clears the box, but next time you check, it's still gray.

Latest XP Pro by the way.

I suggest searching Windows forums and other sites to get an understanding of this problem. A cursory search suggests it's a problem related to Windows itself, and also that the read-only property does not apply to directories and that the bit meaning "read-only" for files means something else for directories but Explorer doesn't know about it (why not, Microsoft?). I very much doubt it has anything to do with Firefox.

Is the SQLite Manager extension able to open that file?

• SQLite Manager: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/

(ddawson): Not at all convinced it has anything at all to do with XP or there would probably be thousands of people having the same issue.

(cor-el): I installed the SQLite Manager and it can read the file fine. I queried the login DB 'SELECT * FROM moz_logins' and it showed me 654 logins that FF will not show me. Entries 14-23 and 366-516 seem to be corrupted (at least they don't look like the others - the hostname and URL fields are empty too). I was able to export the table with the Export Wizard, but the passwords are still encrypted which still doesn't give me a backup of them. Any suggestions on what to do next to retrieve the passwords ? I'm guessing I need to delete the bad entries and see if FF can then read the DB, but hoping there is a better way to have it fix itself.

PS: Thanks to cor-el for at least shedding some light on this and maybe we can find a complete solution shortly.

To check whether it's the database being corrupted, I would try deleting the entries that you think are corrupt (after backing up the file of course) to see whether it then shows up in the password manager.

FYI, entries not looking like others doesn't necessarily mean they're corrupt. There are different types of entries, which use different sets of fields. A web form entry uses hostname, formSubmitURL, username, password, usernameField, and passwordField; whereas an HTTP authentication entry uses hostname, httpRealm, username, and password (although in the table username and password become encryptedUsername and encryptedPassword); for other protocols, generally only the hostname, username, and password fields are used.

I hope you can recover your database one way or another. Because of the encryption and the paucity of documentation, it's not easy to retrieve passwords other than through the Password Manager, though I'm sure it's possible. I don't know of any other software that decrypts the database even without a Master Password set, except probably that written for the purpose of stealing passwords, which should never be trusted. If you do find such software and you know it to be trustworthy, let us all know.

I'll be doing that soon as my last resort - I'm waiting to see if anyone knows of a 'recover' option or something similar for the DB. If nothing comes up, I'll be reverting to my already sussed out plan of trimming my DB manually with the SQLite Manager after careful backup.

Here's a sample of the two 'corrupt' areas in my DB:

1st bad section looks moslty like this (from CSV export):

14,"iDY??",,"","","","]","?","{1d6bb83b-4bc0-49a7-a142-2697884d8504}",1

15,"iDY??",,"","?",">??8","MDIEEPgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECLf55TR5g8UBBAjo5TiRl5C/bQ==","/|?y熚!p","{5bbec1da-55c9-4677-9fb8-c4fa7554717a}",1

16,"iDY??",,"","?","帕g>b","X?ι","t?Q!","{f80efc03-a050-4543-b831-28a5e12426ce}",1

2nd bad section:

366,"",,"","???","x","???","MDIEEPgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECAGwEHAYwJMGBAgmQVCnYNM3mw==","{fcf72cc9-8ec1-487e-b269-2593e9b694ca}",1

367,"",,"","","1D,??","*6:ƛwxظ","MDIEEPgAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECNDPc+xVwtiaBAgfOw8dWQAvaQ==","{22a4ee34-e53e-41e5-a9b3-6f259beff9c6}",1

368,"",,"","ɒfõ?'�?","?)^܆?:","lb`탮⽛","?","{f291ebbe-a4f5-4015-8ce9-6075498a8a2c}",1

These are the field names (after the line number field):

hostname, httpRealm, formSubmitURL, usernameField, passwordField, encryptedUsername, encryptedPassword, guid, encType

Of course make sure that you keep a backup copy of the original file.

You can use a second profile to do some testing. You can use the Saved Password Editor extension to create dummy entries for a web page and then use the SQLite Manager extension to paste the name and password from the original file in it. That should work if you copy key3.db to that other profile and the key3.db is not corrupted or was changed by a Master Password change.

• Saved Password Editor: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/60265

Can't I just import the modified CSV file (or maybe save it as an SQL file and import that) ? The 5th button over in SQLite Manager (under Index pull-down) causes the Export Wizard to become 'Import Wizard' and allows a File Selection Browser to select a file. Not sure what files it can take or if I would need to remove the line numbers from the CSV or what.

Maybe I'll see if I can find any pertinent docs on SQLite Manager. I might be able to access SQLite from Perl and have Perl read in the modified CSV file and enter the lines into the DB (using a practice DB file) and once I have it working, I should be able to copy the new DB file back in to replace the old one. The docs show the format of the SQLite file and there may already be a module to interface to it (I'll have to search the PPM sites).

Just looked and I already have it. I also exported the SQL version of the DB (rather than CSV) and I should be able to modify that and use Perl to rebuild a new file without the damaged items. Will be playing around till I figure out the best way to do this, but I think I see some daylight on the horizon.

OK, I'd like to thank everyone that tried to help and esp cor-el who suggested the sqlite-manager which ultimately helped me to rebuild my password file by deleting the corrupt entries. I made a copy of signons.sqlite in tmp dir and ran the manager on it and deleted the corrupt lines and saved it back out, killed FF, renamed the old file to whatever, renamed the new file to signons.sqlite and restarted FF. I then was able to see my passwords and export them using password exporter.

Much grass, Bill