Extensions can become disabled if the path of the profile folder changes. Try clearing extensions.databaseSchema in about:config then restart the browser.

thanks for the suggestion!

however, when i followed your instructions, all i saw was "34" and i have no idea what that means. tried putting i a 0, but that was disallowed, so i left it at 34. i had assumed there would be a list of some sort and i did not see way to "clearing" it.

how do i clear it?

thanks, wolfgang

What meant is to click the trashcan at the far right on the extensions.databaseSchema line to reset the pref and let Firefox create a new pref. In my Firefox 123.0.1 version the pref is 35, but you shouldn't change this pref to another number.

The Developer Edition version uses a dev-edition-default profile while the release update channel uses default-release (i.e. default-<update_channel>; DE is an exception as it predates the dedicated profile conception).

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile