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Wo archive tread sia. Meɖekuku bia biabia yeye ne ehia kpeɖeŋu.

After copying my FF Profile back after a total re-install of FF, I have my old and a new Profile. Can I delete the new one?

  • 7 ŋuɖoɖowo
  • 1 masɔmasɔ sia le esi
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  • Nuɖoɖo mlɔetɔ jagan605

Fred615
Fred615
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Running Win 10 and FF latest @64 bit. Totally re-installed FF to try to fix a problem with Avast not properly connecting to Firefox. There was a known problem with this according to the Avast Password people and they have stepped me through the details so far including the total re-install of FF. The extension is working but not visible even after the re-install. But now I have 2 Profiles and I am not sure which Profile is being used and I have no idea what might be in the new one, so can I just delete the New one or is there some way to ensure that the Older one is being used?

Running Win 10 and FF latest @64 bit. Totally re-installed FF to try to fix a problem with Avast not properly connecting to Firefox. There was a known problem with this according to the Avast Password people and they have stepped me through the details so far including the total re-install of FF. The extension is working but not visible even after the re-install. But now I have 2 Profiles and I am not sure which Profile is being used and I have no idea what might be in the new one, so can I just delete the New one or is there some way to ensure that the Older one is being used?

All Replies (7)

jagan605
jagan605
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To look at what profiles are being used and to determine their age, got about:profiles page. You can delete the profile from there if you want to.

Fred615
Fred615 Biabia la
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Going to about:profiles showed the new profile being used and did not show the old profile which I copied back to the Profile folder. AND it said that I CAN NOT delete the profile being used. I still need a way to CHANGE from the new profile to the old..

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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If the profile isn't listed in the profiles.ini file then you will have to remove the profile manually yourself.

Note that Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder (AppData\Roaming and AppData\Local).

Location used for the main profile in "AppData\Roaming" that keeps your personal data.

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files in "AppData\Local".

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
Fred615
Fred615 Biabia la
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Are the profiles.ini and about:profiles basically the same piece of data?

I checked both the Roaming and Local folders and the same two profiles are in each; one new created by FF when I installed the latest version yesterday and the "old" one which I had separately backed up and then copied back into the Roaming folder. The dates on the profiles were different in the Local folder, with the 16th on the new profile and the 15th on the old profile. In the Roaming folder, they both had the same date of the 16th since that is where I restored the old profile.

Before I deleted FF, I also backed up my bookmarks per Mozilla's protocol and I restored them with no problems. So at this time I am actually wondering if I need to worry about which profile is being used since FF seems to be working fine. Is there anything I need to worry about in the future? Is this really a non-issue and should I just fuggeddaboutit ? Or keep spinning my wheels?

My real concern is whether the profile chosen may have an impact on my ability to get Avast Passwords to work with FF.

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Yes. The about:profiles page shows the data stored in profiles.ini plus some extra data like the full file path of both the main profile folder and a possible second location for the disk cache.

If you want to be able to check the old profile then you need to register this profile in the profiles.ini file. You can do that by editing profiles.ini or easier to use the Profile Manager to create a new profile and use "Choose Folder" in the second window to browse to this not listed profile.

Note that you should never use "Choose Folder" to specify a folder that already contains files that do not belong to Firefox (i.e. only use "Choose Folder" to recover an orphaned profile that isn't listed in the Profile Manager).

Fred615
Fred615 Biabia la
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Before I register and try the "old" profile, one last question; I just fixed the issue between FF and Avast that caused this re-install of FF and subsequent small problems. Which means that if FF is currently using the NEW profile, will I lose the fix I just put in place if I switch to the OLD profile? I would just like to know ahead of time, so I don't go off the deep end..

And then where do I find the Profile Manager?

Thanks....

jagan605
jagan605
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Management of profiles is explained in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles. If the 'fix' you performed for issues with Avast involved editing your profile then you need to repeat them with the new profile. But before that check if it works without any modification.