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How do I restore Firefox to what it was, i.e. my bookmarks, extensions, etc., after losing all my settings from a restore in XP?

yankeespride
yankeespride
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I attempted to do a restore on my windows xp. Bad move on my part. When the pc booted back up and was restored, I clicked on my Firefox shortcut, but nothing happened. This also occurred when I clicked on my Chrome shortcut. I'm not a techie, but hopefully the restore just broke these shortcuts, and all my Firefox settings are still available. Come to think of it, another program I tried to run is CCleaner after the restore as well. It opened from the task manager, but when I tried to click on "look for updates/an updated version" nothing happened at all. It usually will say something like, "you have the most current version." Although CCleaner is not a browser, it seemed to be behaving similar to when I tried to open Firefox through the shortcut on my desktop. The only browser that is working for me as I type this is IE. How do I go about restoring all my settings, bookmarks, extensions, plugins, etc. for Firefox?

I attempted to do a restore on my windows xp. Bad move on my part. When the pc booted back up and was restored, I clicked on my Firefox shortcut, but nothing happened. This also occurred when I clicked on my Chrome shortcut. I'm not a techie, but hopefully the restore just broke these shortcuts, and all my Firefox settings are still available. Come to think of it, another program I tried to run is CCleaner after the restore as well. It opened from the task manager, but when I tried to click on "look for updates/an updated version" nothing happened at all. It usually will say something like, "you have the most current version." Although CCleaner is not a browser, it seemed to be behaving similar to when I tried to open Firefox through the shortcut on my desktop. The only browser that is working for me as I type this is IE. How do I go about restoring all my settings, bookmarks, extensions, plugins, etc. for Firefox?

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Using System Restore can cause your Firefox installation to get corrupted because only white-listed files are restored, so always be cautious with using System Restore.

  • You may lose data in the Firefox profile folder like .js and .ini files
  • You may need to reinstall affected software

Do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before (re)installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.

If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows registry and settings in security software.

  • Do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall your current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including data in profiles created by other Firefox versions.

Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.

  • (32 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
  • (64 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"

Your bookmarks and other personal data are stored in the Firefox profile folder and won't be affected by an uninstall and (re)install, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.

If you keep having problems then also create a new profile.

yankeespride
yankeespride Question owner
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Hi cor-el. Thank you for your response. "Do a clean reinstall and delete the Firefox program folder before (re)installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release." I'm not sure how to do these steps. I don't know where these specific folders are, and I'm afraid I'm going to mess it up more. Under Program Files on my pc, there are 2 Mozilla Firefox folders. One is "Mozilla Firefox" and the other is "Mozilla Firefox(2).bak. When I couldn't get the Firefox shortcut to open, I used IE to download and install the latest version of Firefox, but it's barren - none of my settings are there. The setup file for this new Firetox is saved to my desktop called Firefox Setup Stub 35.0.