Hello Melissa.

You should keep the number of extensions and plugins installed as low as possible. We can't help you in telling which ones are which, but my advice is for you to disable them all, and take a bit of time to enable them one by one, see which one does what, make sure they aren't causing any problems and so on.

But how can I tell which Bookmarks Tool I have? I can't figure it out & I hate it and want to uninstall it. How do I choose a very simple BookMarks Tool? then how do I uninstall the old one and not lose all my bookmarks? (I have a ton of them which I use often.) Right now, I can even get to them.

The default bookmarks tool is accessed by going into Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks... If you do this, maybe you I can help you some more:

Type about:support in your address bar and press enter. Then click "Copy all to clipboard", paste here and post. That will give me the list of all your extensions. 18 really isn't that much :) It's gonna be easy.

Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of your add-ons is causing your problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Tools > Add-ons > Themes). See Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems and Troubleshoot issues with plugins like Flash or Java to fix common Firefox problems --- See also: Find and install add-ons to add features to Firefox Use extensions to add features to Firefox Disable or remove Add-ons

I guess I made a big mistake. I uninstalled "Xmarks" (last night) & lost a TON OF BOOKMARKS. I have a backup on my desktop. How can I use that to get my bookmarks back? (I tried clicking on the shortcut and it's as if nothing is there.)

I had a simple bookmark tool before but had a lot of trouble getting it to sort my bookmarks alphabetically.

Morbus, I tried what you said several times & could not get it to work. I listed my plug-ins above. Here are my THEMES: Aeon Colors 3.5.2, Default Theme 3.5.9 and Hemporor 3.3 Extensions: Adblock Plus 1.2, Answer 2.3.54, Categorize 0.9.3.1, Cybersearch 2.0.5, FEBE 6.3.3, Free Download Mgr plug in 1.3.4, Google Gears .05.536.0, Jave Auickstart 1.0, LastPass 1.68.2, MS Net Framework 1.21, Share This 3.4.2, Toolbar buttons 0.6.0.8, WOT, and I have disable Sor Places and Sync Places Corel: I am too scared to do what you suggested.

My Main Concern is losing my Bookmarks (which by uninstalling Xmarks, I have lost a LOT.) I use WOT and Last Pass a lot. To tell you the truth, I am not even sure what all the others are for.

How many of each category should you allow yourself to have? I didn't know it would affect my performance. I just looked at the highest rated & ones I though I would find helpful.

Sorry guys, I know I am not making this easy for you. It's just that I understand so little about all this stuff & never have time to read up on all of them. I have spent so many HOURS trying to figure stuff out. My brain is just not logical. (Never was good with things that had to be "exact". I am more of an artist.)

Thanks again! (:

~Melissa

I just wanted to add that I cannot even bookmark a page now. I can see my old bookmarks from before I had Xmarks but I cannot bookmark a page into one of those categories/folders.

Make a backup copy of the five daily JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder in the Firefox Profile Folder to be sure that you do not lose a valuable backup as each day that you start Firefox the oldest is removed and replaced by today's backup that doesn't have missing bookmarks.

What kind of backup do you have on the desktop? An HTML backup or a JSON backup?

See also Restore bookmarks from backup or move them to another computer

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Backing_up_and_restoring_bookmarks_-_Firefox

Melissa.

If your bookmarks are stored in a HTML file, this article is what you need: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Importing+Bookmarks+from+an+HTML+File

About the about:support, it only works on Firefox 3.6 and above. I'm sorry for asking that. Never mind, in any case, since you already provided the info I need. You probably won't loose your bookmarks, but you can easily back them up before you do anything:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+your+information http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+and+restoring+bookmarks

Anyway, let's make this as easy as possible.

1. prior to doing anything, restore your bookmarks from the backup you have. See the link above for info on how to import from HTML;
2. once you have your bookmarks, back them up. Make sure you have them safe somewhere they are not getting deleted;
3. now, go into Tools > Add-ons > Extensions, and disable all extensions (not uninstall, just disable). You'll need to restart your browser for them to uninstall;
4. make sure that, now, you're Firefox is not crashing (if it is, please say so). Make sure you have your bookmarks in Firefox too. Restore them if they're gone (see the link above).
5. now, enable one extension at a time (you need to restart firefox for them to enable). Make sure you want that extension to be enabled. Make sure you actually need it (when in doubt, keep them disabled). As you can imagine, the more extensions you have installed, the harder it is to keep track of which ones do what and which ones are giving you trouble. Also, make sure the extension is not causing Firefox to crash.
6. keep enabling extensions until you've gone through them all. Hopefully, in this process, you ended up finding which one(s) was(were) causing the crashes, and which ones do what.

Everyone has been so great trying to explain things here. What I finally did was to install Google Chrome and import my current bookmarks there. (I realized that I need to sort thru them since a lot of them are old and I don't use them.)

Now I am thinking I would like to completely uninstall FireFox and then reinstall it and start all over. Would this be a big deal? All my email is thru gmail so that should not be a problem.

And this time, before I install add-ons, is there a place to help me decide how many I really need and can have (ones that I like).

I just feel for me, that this would be the easiest way to do it. I would also like to go back one version on firefox's browser since before they kept pushing me (& I finally gave in) to update, that is when I started having all kinds of crazy problems. I don't think the majority of bugs are worked out (or so that has been my experience.)

The only thing I really don't want to lose is Last Pass but to be honest with you, that messed up recently as well and I lost most of my password/log-ins and identities so I am going to have to manually fill those in again so why not just start all over?

Please let me know what you think please? And keep in mind, for you this is easy stuff, for me this is like greek and it is terrifying for me to do this all alone so I want the easiest possible way out!

Thanks so much for all your time and suggustions!

~Melissa

Hello Melissa.

If you have a problem with Google Chrome, you need to contact Google, since they are the ones that develop it.

If you want help uninstalling Firefox, hopefully this support article is what you need:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Uninstalling+Firefox

If, just in case, you want to backup your information (bookmarks, add-ons, preferences, history, settings, passwords, sessions, cookies, the lot), you can see this support article:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Backing+up+your+information

If you need help managing Firefox profiles (and I will remind you that if running a new Firefox profile doesn't fix any eventual issue you may be having in your own profile, reinstalling Firefox completely will not be more helpful that simply reinstalling Firefox and keeping your profile), see this support article:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles

If you need help troubleshooting plugins (a kind of add-ons), see this article:

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting+plugins

Be mindful that Firefox doesn't have any control over plugins, since these are installed in your computer rather than in Firefox, and although you can disable and enable plugins manually by going into Tools > Add-ons > Plugins, you cannot uninstalled them through Firefox. You will need to contact the developer of each plugin for support on that, but I'd say Windows Control Panel is a good place to look for that. As such, plugins are ported between profiles and installs, and you need to bear that in mind when troubleshooting a problem with Firefox.

If you want to manage (enable, disable, update, configure and uninstall) extensions or themes (the other two kinds of add-ons), you can do so by going into Tools > Add-ons > Extensions and Tools > Add-ons > Themes respectively. If you are having any trouble with that, feel free to ask here. If you want to get more add-ons, you can search for them at addons.mozilla.org. While all add-ons that are not experimental (experimental extensions are clearly marked as such and may not even be visible to all users) are tested by Mozilla for security issues and major performance problems, bear in mind that extensions will use up varying amounts of RAM and CPU power, depending on their features and their quality. Sometimes, users will install huge amounts of extensions, or some that is not so well done, and Firefox's performance and stability will be affected. Make sure that each extension you install is working as it should, and contact its author if you need support.

If you want to use an older version of Firefox, know that only versions 3.5 and 3.6 are supported, and older versions have been discontinued and are no longer supported. Furthermore, they have known bugs and security problems. I urge you to keep using a supported version of Firefox, for maximum stability, performance, security and usability. You can get 3.6 for free, as always, at getfirefox.com.

If you are having problems only after updating to the latest version, and if you've made sure that it's not due to a faulty add-on (run Firefox in safe mode to easily and temporarily disable all add-ons on your current profile), and if you've made sure a new Firefox profile (managing profiles) has the same issue (even in safe mode, with no add-ons), you want to consider external possible sources of the problem. The reason for this is that Firefox has no issue of this sort that spans across all users, so it's localized, and triggered by some external or internal factor that has not been predicted or is impossible for Mozilla to deal with. Those possible causes include, but are not limited to, badly configured antivirus/firewall/security suite software that may be conflicting with Firefox, a badly maintained system with excessive clutter (such as too many programs running on the background, for example), or a system infected by malware. On this latest point, I will make you aware of a common case that consists of users of Firefox 3.5 that have their system infected by malware specifically designed to attack Firefox 3.5, updating their Firefox to 3.6 and suddenly suffering from performance issues and even crashers, due to the fact that Firefox 3.6 "breaks" that malware. If you want to scan your system for malware and other threats, iInstall, update and run these programs in this order. They are all free for personal use, but some have limited functionality in the "free mode", but those are features you really don't need to find and remove the problem that you have. (Not all programs detect the same Malware.)

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php SuperAntispyware - http://www.superantispyware.com/ AdAware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ Spybot Search & Destroy - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html Windows Defender - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx Dr. Web Cureit - http://www.freedrweb.com/cureit/

If these don't find it or can't clear it, post in one of these forums for specialized malware removal help: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/index.php http://forum.aumha.org/ http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/ http://bleepingcomputer.com

I apologize for this lengthy post, but I do hope that it's as comprehensive and as helpful as you'll need it to be (you may need to read it slowly and more than once to fully understand it...). If you have any other questions at all, I'll gladly answer them in this thread.

Also, Melissa, if you need me to clarify anything, just ask. I tried to make it as clear as possible for someone without experience, but explanations of this kind are bound to have jargon in them, and may be exceedingly hard to understand for non-native English speakers (as I am).