Take CARE with trying to uninstall firefox. If you take options saying something like remove personal settings, it is likely to remove profile files form ALL normally installed versions of Firefox, and you will loose pass words and bookmarks etc.

If you have a beta install of firefox and a standard install it may be normal to have two sets of program folders/paths.

That could be part of your problem, I deliberately run multiple versions. but if that is done it is considered unusual, and a slightly advanced topic. To run multiple versions correctly multiple profiles need to be used.

All you need to do initially is to install the current version to Firefox. It will install over the existing copy without you needing to delete anything, or uninstall anything. Go to one of the standard sites : http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html

The uninstalls should have worked, but maybe you are lucky they did not, at least you will not have lost the profiles. Presumably you have only the one profile and therfore all your bookmarks are in one profile, or do you see totally different bookmarks in each version ?
(indicating you may already have two profiles).

Thank you John, your explanation was very helpful to me. I have always accessed Firefox from the quick launch panel on my desktop. After reading your reply I went to the Start button to launch both versions of Firefox to see what exactly I had. I learned that the 2nd folder was the "Safe Mode" of version 8.

Now that I understand I have only one version of Firefox and one profile, I will leave it be.

Thank you again for your excellent help.