Have lost ALL bookmarks! They exist in a directory on my pc under Documents and Settings/Favorites. I need to know how to copy the directory to firefox
The bookmarks in IE6 are not updated because I only use Firefox for my browser, so trying to import/export from IE is useless. Bookmark.htm file is blank after upgrading and then downgrading back to 3.6.
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Did you do a complete uninstall and remove all your saved settings?
If not, you should be able to restore your Firefox bookmarks.
If you haven't made a backup recently, it's probably a good idea. To back up Firefox, see Backing up your information. You can copy the entire Profiles folder somewhere outside the Mozilla folder.
Now... in that same profile folder should be backups of your Firefox bookmarks. This article describes how to load your bookmarks from those backups: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Backing-up-restoring-bookmarks#w_restoring-from-backups
Any luck?
If you removed all Firefox settings, then the easiest way to convert your "Favorites" folder -- which is your IE bookmarks folder -- is to use IE's Export feature to create a fresh bookmark.htm file for importing into Firefox. This previous forum thread has good information on that process: Only 1/3rd of my bookmarks imported from IE. How do I move the rest? | Firefox Support Forum | Firefox Help.
If you downgrade from a Firefox 4+ version (Firefox 11) to Firefox 3.6.x then file that were upgraded (converted) to newer versions may no longer be compatible with Firefox 3.6.x and you may have to create a new profile to avoid further problems.
A likely cause is a problem with the file places.sqlite that stores the bookmarks and the history.
I have tried to restore my pc to an earlier date before installed updates to Firefox. However, now I cannot open Firefox, uninstall using Add or Remove on Control Panel and have multiple Mozilla directories under Documents and Settings/Applications/Mozilla. They are: Mozilla (no profile appears), Mozilla2 with Profile2, Profile3, Profile4 and Profile5. Before just deleting all of the related folders/files I need to know what file contains my bookmarks so that I can safely save them to another location on my pc. It appears to me that by trying to originally upgrading Firefox on my pc, it aborted before completion and now is not recognized by the hard drive. I just want to secure my bookmarks so that I can be rid of Firefox!
Sorry to hear about the mess of files.
For future reference, the Windows System Restore feature is not very useful in resolving Firefox issues because Windows doesn't include a copy of your Firefox profile folder, just the few settings that Firefox adds to the Windows registry.
Usually, the profile folders are all under one \Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles path, not multiple Mozilla paths. This could indicate that there was a lock on the original folder or a permissions problem in updating it. I think it is a good idea to clean those all up.
I suggest copying both the Mozilla folders to a new location outside the Application Data folder. At your leisure, you can compare the contents of the profile folders (check the bookmarkbackups folders) to determine which looks the most complete and up-to-date. That would be the one to import after you reinstall Firefox. However, it might not be possible to determine without trying, so I wouldn't delete any of them just yet.
To uninstall Firefox, look for the inset box in #5 in this article: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Uninstalling%20Firefox for the location of the helper.exe uninstall program.
This article has a set of specific file locations to clear out for a clean uninstall: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_firefox#On_Windows
Firefox should only use and access profiles in the Mozilla folder.
Other folder with a number may have been created by you or other software in the past.
You can check the file dates and the content of compatibility.ini to see which Firefox version has last used that profile.