Missing Profile, settings and data - extentions, bookmarks, passwords etc
Due to a Windows 11 system restore, I had to reinstall Firefox. After signing in I found that all bookmarks, extensions and passwords have gone and the original 2020 profile they were attached to seems to be missing as well. I initially installed the Firefox app from the windows store and thought that might have been the problem, so uninstalled it and reinstalled from the mozilla website. That didn't heelp so I went through all the help articles I could find and I still can't figure out how to restore anything.
All Replies (3)
Hi
Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service.
It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service.
If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article.
If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.
Thank you for the reply.
I marked this as a sync issue as I wasn't sure which title to post under and sync seemed to be the most appropriate after reading the article on recovering lost bookmarks linked to above, as well as all the other articles that it linked to, amongst others. One of these articles stated that firefox created a new profile for each instillation, and old profiles can be used to recover lost data by syncing with a new profile (I think). My issue after reading these articles and using the information provided to try resolve the problem, is that the reinstall created a new clean profile, and my original profile is missing. I am trying to find out why the original profile is missing and whether it is recoverable or not.
I was not aware that firefox required a backup until trying to resolve this issue and had not created a mobile version of firefox before the recent reinstall.
When I signed in on my new computer my bookmarks are not synced, and the only bookmarks in the toolbar are the default bookmarks. How do I get them back?