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Will not permit me to load an old profile. Your instructions on the recovering data page just feed me into an endless loop of prompts to create a new profile.

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

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Will not permit me to load an old profile. Your instructions on the recovering data page just feed me into an endless loop of prompts to create a new profile.


The old profiles had my logins for work. I would prefer not to have to spend hours resetting something like 15-20 logins and profiles and then the next two months forgetting what the new ones are.

Will not permit me to load an old profile. Your instructions on the recovering data page just feed me into an endless loop of prompts to create a new profile. The old profiles had my logins for work. I would prefer not to have to spend hours resetting something like 15-20 logins and profiles and then the next two months forgetting what the new ones are.

All Replies (2)

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Hi andrewchalk88, are you running the Extended Support Release of Firefox 68, or are you running a current version with a modified user agent string?

Generally speaking, older versions of Firefox won't run a profile folder from a new version. However, you may be able to transplant just this one pair of files if the format hasn't changed too much to be used in an older version:

  • logins.json
  • key4.db
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You can copy files like these with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover specific data.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.


  • bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
  • favicons: favicons.sqlite
  • bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
  • cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
  • formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
  • logins.json (passwords) and key4.db (58+) or key3.db (57 and older) (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
    if you only have key3.db then make sure to remove an existing key4.db
  • cert9.db (58+) or cert8.db (57 and older) for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
    if you only have cert8.db then make sure to remove an existing cert9.db
  • persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
  • permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)