The Refresh feature moves your Firefox profile folder (settings folder) into an Old Firefox Data on your desktop. Normally your profile folder is in a deeply buried location far away from your existing Desktop folders or files or anything in your My Documents folder, so it's very confusing what you're describing.

Instead of viewing your Desktop using the normal display, what if you view it using Windows Explorer? You can open that using either the Start menu or by pressing the keyboard combination Windows key + E. Does that show the same problem with files in the wrong places or is the display more rational?

If you double-click into Old Firefox Data, do you find one semi-randomly named folder? DO NOT DELETE THIS FOLDER.

hunza said

Firefox asked if I would like to "refresh" Firefox in order to speed things up. I chose to "refresh", however the "refresh" process ruined my desktop documents and the documents in the "my documents" file. Firefox put all of my documents into one enormous file and called it "Old Firefox". Now there is no way to open any single file and the huge composite mix cannot be opened at all. In addition, Firefox messed up my desktop files that I was previously working on, and scattered them around. When I tried to put the desktop file icons in order again, they moved as one enormous unit and could not be moved individually. This is a disaster for me and I hope it can be fixed. Thank you.

Did you make a custom location with the ProfileManager to have your Profile located on Desktop? as that would be only likely reason why your desktop was changed this way.

Make sure if you do a custom location for Profile in ProfileManager you make it in its own folder. This is especially important if you were to use the ProfileManager to delete the profile as otherwise you would delete everything that was in same folder.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#firefox

Thank you JScher2000 for your reply. To answer your questions:

1. Windows explorer showed no difference in my documents. 2. I opened the "old Firefox data " folder and there is a single randomly-named folder within. I did not delete it. I assume I should put it in with my documents? 3. When I hit the refresh button that Firefox presented, I had been writing a paper and had several Firefox downloads open that were references for the writing. I had also pulled copies of documents from my documents folder so that I could work with them on the desktop. A message appeared stating that Firefox was slow and that I could speed things up by pressing a refresh button which immediately appeared. I pressed it without thinking. When the refresh process began, Firefox began moving things around on the desktop and making multiple copies of the icons, and things kept shuffling around. This was alarming. I could not locate an important file I was working with, one that I had placed on the desktop, so I went into documents to see if it was still there. It was, so I tried to move a copy to the desktop, but an entire group of files came with it. Firefox was also making copies of shortcuts that were on the desktop, including the Firefox shortcut itself. At this point, things were such a mess that I quit working on the paper I was writing and posted this question to Firefox instead. Later, when Firefox had stopped all the desktop activity, I began to clean up the mess and dispose of all the extra copies of shortcuts. I sorted through all of the jumbled shortcuts to the files and was able to rescue most of them, but some of the shortcuts were no longer working. I think that when Firefox offers the choice of refreshing, they should also warn that open files and windows should be closed and activity should cease before clicking the refresh button. Or maybe present two buttons, one for "refresh", and one that says "not now", or "later". Perhaps if I had been given more of a choice, I would not have made what turned out to be a mistake. Can you think of an explanation for this? Several of my documents on the desktop had previously been downloaded using Firefox, and I think that may have contributed to the problem, but I don't know enough about Firefox to be sure.

Re #2, you can just keep the old profile folder for possible reference; it's not likely to have things that are useful if not accessed through Firefox or restored into Firefox.

Re #3, I'm having a hard time thinking of a good or logical reason for Firefox to move any files off your desktop or out of (My) Documents. If you had a file open, Firefox should have kept a record of the location so your session could be restored, but it shouldn't copy or move the file.

I think someone once mentioned losing all their downloads when uninstalling Firefox with the option to remove personal data, but I haven't heard of that happening with a Refresh.

If you open your currently active Firefox profile folder, where is it located on your system? You can check that using one of these methods for opening the folder:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

On Windows XP, the address bar normally would point to this area:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

If it points into your Desktop or My Documents, then that is a possible reason Firefox might mess with those folders.