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Recover Original Profile after ESR Install

  • 2 பதிலளிப்புகள்
  • 0 இந்த பிரச்னைகள் உள்ளது
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  • Last reply by TechHorse
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Ok, I screwed up.

I was trying to solve a problem I've been having with regular releases of Firefox and it occurred to me try the ESR release so I downloaded and installed it. The good news is that it solved my problem, the bad news is that I just barrelled into it without thinking, assuming that my logins and bookmarks would just transfer over like with regular releases. They did not. It turns out I should have made a backup of those things first and I can't open the old regular release of Firefox to properly back-up those things now. Oops.

I've been reading lots of forum posts here and elsewhere trying to get those files into ESR and I haven't been successful. From the profile manager I've located the profile that still contains that info and I've tried:

Copying and pasting the "logins.json" and "key4.db" files from the "default-release" profile into the ESR profile which didn't work.

From "about:profiles" I also tried to "launch profile in a new browser" of the default-release profile so I can open that profile and properly back-up bookmarks and logins but I get a prompt to create a new profile which I tried several times and only resulted in several profiles of the ESR release.

Then it occurred to me that If I could just delete all instances of ESR and open the old default-profile then I could back-up the logins and bookmarks, THEN download and install ESR again and import those files but before diving into that I need to make sure that won't loose my original default-release profile info.

So experts, does that sound reasonable? Delete all instances of ESR so I can open the regular Firefox? What's the best way of going about that?

Thank you.

Ok, I screwed up. I was trying to solve a problem I've been having with regular releases of Firefox and it occurred to me try the ESR release so I downloaded and installed it. The good news is that it solved my problem, the bad news is that I just barrelled into it without thinking, assuming that my logins and bookmarks would just transfer over like with regular releases. They did not. It turns out I should have made a backup of those things first and I can't open the old regular release of Firefox to properly back-up those things now. Oops. I've been reading lots of forum posts here and elsewhere trying to get those files into ESR and I haven't been successful. From the profile manager I've located the profile that still contains that info and I've tried: Copying and pasting the "logins.json" and "key4.db" files from the "default-release" profile into the ESR profile which didn't work. From "about:profiles" I also tried to "launch profile in a new browser" of the default-release profile so I can open that profile and properly back-up bookmarks and logins but I get a prompt to create a new profile which I tried several times and only resulted in several profiles of the ESR release. Then it occurred to me that If I could just delete all instances of ESR and open the old default-profile then I could back-up the logins and bookmarks, THEN download and install ESR again and import those files but before diving into that I need to make sure that won't loose my original default-release profile info. So experts, does that sound reasonable? Delete all instances of ESR so I can open the regular Firefox? What's the best way of going about that? Thank you.

All Replies (2)

BradBox82, if you have found the profilr folder that contains the original passwords and bookmarks etc. on the hardrive, then the absolute first thing to do is to fully close all running instances of Firefox then copy this folder to a safe backup location.

That way if anything goes wrong, you will at least be able to restore the data into standard Firefox.

Sory, I can't help with ESR specifically.

But you can certainly install a fresh copy of standard Firefox, and if it doesn't pick up the original profile then you can manually copy the files places.sqlite, favicons.sqlite, logins.json and key4.db from the backup to the new profile folder, then within standard Firefox export bookmarks and passwords to files.

And later install ESR and try to import those files from within it.

Hopefully someone who knows more about ESR can answer more specifically.

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