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Firefox asks for a profile to be created everytime it opens and no access to profile restore

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Downloaded Firefox to a new Mac and every time it opens to the Choose user profile screen but there are no profiles. Cannot access the profile manager to copy my profile from my other computer's Firefox because it says I do not have permission even though I am the admin. Have deleted and reinstalled several times but always the same result. Once I quit Firefox and reopen have to recreate a new profile every time.

Downloaded Firefox to a new Mac and every time it opens to the Choose user profile screen but there are no profiles. Cannot access the profile manager to copy my profile from my other computer's Firefox because it says I do not have permission even though I am the admin. Have deleted and reinstalled several times but always the same result. Once I quit Firefox and reopen have to recreate a new profile every time.

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Try to repair the disk permissions:


See also:

This is usually caused by a problem with the profiles.ini file and the profile marked as Default=1 in this file is no longer present on the hard drive.

  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can use one of these to make Firefox create a new default profile or reuse an existing profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
    Use "Choose Folder" when you create a new profile to select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile

Modified by cor-el