This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Failed Update ... What next?

more options

My wife has an older Mac. About a week ago, a pop-up from Firefox told her to update her program. She loaded in the new one and when she tried to open it she got the message that her computer was too old for the update.

We had to reload the most recent update which had been running on her computer.

Now, none of her bookmarks show up and the bookmark toolbar will not display near the top of the screen as it used to.

None of help items online are of any use because what they say will show up on the screen (such as when you enter "about:profiles") is not what shows up on her screen.

Is there any way to recover her bookmarks, passwords and other saved data, please?

My wife has an older Mac. About a week ago, a pop-up from Firefox told her to update her program. She loaded in the new one and when she tried to open it she got the message that her computer was too old for the update. We had to reload the most recent update which had been running on her computer. Now, none of her bookmarks show up and the bookmark toolbar will not display near the top of the screen as it used to. None of help items online are of any use because what they say will show up on the screen (such as when you enter "about:profiles") is not what shows up on her screen. Is there any way to recover her bookmarks, passwords and other saved data, please?

Chosen solution

Firefox 36 required a minimum of Mac OS X 10.6. If your wife has at least that version, she can update to the Extended Support Release of Firefox 45:

http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.9.0esr/mac/en-US/

That's for U.S. English. For other languages/locales, click the .. link on that page and then click into the desired folder.

But I don't think the about:profiles page was added until Firefox 47, so either way, you would still need to use the external profile manager to see whether Firefox can start up using the earlier profile.

Before doing that:

It would be a good idea to see what version of Firefox touched the profile last because there was less protection against corruption before Firefox 67. Check the compatibility.ini file in a text editor to see what version of Firefox is listed in each profile folder.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (12)

more options

about: pages are internal to the Firefox browser. Launch Firefox. In a new tab, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return You should see a page similar to the attached image.

If not, what is it that you see?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

more options

Here's what I see:

(Please see attached image.)

Thank you for trying to help.

more options

What Mac OS X version is on your wife's computer ?

Note that Firefox 78.15.0 is the last version for Mac OS X 10.9 and 10.10 and 10.11. Current releases require Mac OS X 10.12 or newer.

Firefox 78.15.0 on the Mozilla CDN server:

more options

She's got MAC 10.0.5

She's got Firefox 36.0.4. The website said that she is up to date with that version.

Thank you.

more options

After you get your installation straightened out there's also this - Finding your profile without opening Firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#w_finding-your-profile-without-opening-firefox

more options

Thanks, but I already tried that, and all the examples look as if that solution is for Windows OS, not Mac.

more options

If you open it with Mac it should automatically customize for Mac. Otherwise, you can do it manually at the upper right.

Anyway, for Mac - Finding your profile without opening Firefox

Click the Finder icon in the dock. On the menu bar, click the Go menu, hold down the option or alt key and select Library. A window will open containing your Library folder. Open the Application Support folder, then open the Firefox folder, and then the Profiles folder. Your profile folder is within this folder. If you only have one profile, its folder would have "default" in the name.

more options

Yeah. I had found that before. But knowing where that is didn't help with solving the problem.

more options

Chosen Solution

Firefox 36 required a minimum of Mac OS X 10.6. If your wife has at least that version, she can update to the Extended Support Release of Firefox 45:

http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/45.9.0esr/mac/en-US/

That's for U.S. English. For other languages/locales, click the .. link on that page and then click into the desired folder.

But I don't think the about:profiles page was added until Firefox 47, so either way, you would still need to use the external profile manager to see whether Firefox can start up using the earlier profile.

Before doing that:

It would be a good idea to see what version of Firefox touched the profile last because there was less protection against corruption before Firefox 67. Check the compatibility.ini file in a text editor to see what version of Firefox is listed in each profile folder.

more options

Firefox 48.0 and later required Mac OS X 10.9 at minimum to run until Fx 79.0 which requires 10.12 at minimum.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/45.0/system-requirements/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/47.0/system-requirements/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/48.0/system-requirements/

The Firefox 45.9.0 esr will be the most up to date (with security fixes) to run if you have Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, 10.8

If the Firefox version you have is Firefox 36.0.4 then I agree the OS on system is at least Mac OS X 10.6 as 10.6 has been a minimum system requirement since Firefox 17.0

more options

Does she have a Time Machine backup or other backup that could be used to restore file(s) from this backup in case the profile has been corrupted ?

more options

Thank you to all who replied.

Thank you, especially to JScher2000 who provided a solve that worked!

I updated to the version in the link. It immediately started to download an update. Minutes later, it said I needed another update. That one produced the message that all my bookmarks would be lost if I continued.

So, I cancelled and reinstalled the first version from the link, which automatically updated to the second. Now, all I have to do is to advise my wife to ignore any further update requests.

Thank you!