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Firefox won't install/refresh properly

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moz2u
moz2u

Yesterday Firefox (latest) kept on restarting and needed to refresh. It refreshed and I lost all my extensions. (They can be reloaded from "Old Firefox Data" so not a big problem but that may startle some new users. It would have been preferable to inform the user beforehand and offer to back them up to a place they choose. Anyway, I tried re-installing after uninstalling and the same thing happened. I can't even get it to run. Suggestions? I went through every folder to purge every last file of Firefox. Is this a problem with the newest version? Should I download something a little older?

Update: I purged more thoroughly every file related to Mozilla and Firefox I could find. Installed latest (48.0) and it seems to be OK. Haven't added anything yet, not even bookmarks so we'll see how it goes. So far so good. If this happens to you, purge well. Window's Add/Remove Programs is kind of sloppy. It leaves lots of stuff left. Use the Search function in Windows or a specialized search program like UltraSearch or FileSearchEX to locate all stray files. Back up as much as you can beforehand. Its good to know the locations of things that matter, like bookmarks, passwords, etc so a reinstall and restore doesn't take long. Firefox has a good feature whereby they backup your bookmarks each day automatically. So useful. Most users don't have a clue about this or where it is.

Yesterday Firefox (latest) kept on restarting and needed to refresh. It refreshed and I lost all my extensions. (They can be reloaded from "Old Firefox Data" so not a big problem but that may startle some new users. It would have been preferable to inform the user beforehand and offer to back them up to a place they choose. Anyway, I tried re-installing after uninstalling and the same thing happened. I can't even get it to run. Suggestions? I went through every folder to purge every last file of Firefox. Is this a problem with the newest version? Should I download something a little older? Update: I purged more thoroughly every file related to Mozilla and Firefox I could find. Installed latest (48.0) and it seems to be OK. Haven't added anything yet, not even bookmarks so we'll see how it goes. So far so good. If this happens to you, purge well. Window's Add/Remove Programs is kind of sloppy. It leaves lots of stuff left. Use the Search function in Windows or a specialized search program like UltraSearch or FileSearchEX to locate all stray files. Back up as much as you can beforehand. Its good to know the locations of things that matter, like bookmarks, passwords, etc so a reinstall and restore doesn't take long. Firefox has a good feature whereby they backup your bookmarks each day automatically. So useful. Most users don't have a clue about this or where it is.

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All Replies (3)

the-edmeister
the-edmeister

Tyler told you here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1134222#answer-905172 - Firefox doesn't refresh itself, it will give you an option to do it if Firefox thinks it will help, but that dialog does warn that you will lose your extensions and settings. You can read more about refresh at Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings."

Did you get tired of waiting for the Refresh procedure to end, and you closed Firefox before the Refresh was complete? That would "kill" the Profile and keep Firefox from opening or working.

Try creating a new Profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

And no, this isn't related to the current version of Firefox. You screwed something up.

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

moz2u said

Window's Add/Remove Programs is kind of sloppy. It leaves lots of stuff left.

I'd love to blame Windows, but actually, it just runs the uninstallers provided by software publishers. The Firefox uninstaller does not delete your browser data because it's very common for people to uninstall/reinstall and they do not expect to lose their data. If you WANT to lose your data, you can create a new Firefox profile and, after it is up and running the way you like, then delete your old one.

moz2u
moz2u Úinéir na ceiste

I forgot about that. Its up to the uninstaller provided to do the job. Good point. Thanks.