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Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible. Get this every time my browser sits for 10 minutes and I have to restart

  • 7 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by RexIC

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I asked this question before and performance is somewhat better but still at least three times a day I have to restart my computer just to get FF to run. It starts fine first time. If I let my computer go to Screen Saver, when I get back, pages will not load. When I close FF I get a message that FF is still running. When I chose Close FF I get the message in the question. Every single day. I like FF but will switch to Chrome if I have to restart my computer three times a day just to use FF. Very frustrating.

I asked this question before and performance is somewhat better but still at least three times a day I have to restart my computer just to get FF to run. It starts fine first time. If I let my computer go to Screen Saver, when I get back, pages will not load. When I close FF I get a message that FF is still running. When I chose Close FF I get the message in the question. Every single day. I like FF but will switch to Chrome if I have to restart my computer three times a day just to use FF. Very frustrating.

All Replies (7)

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You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.

Does this also happen with all plugins (e.g.) disabled/

You can set all plugins to "Ask to Activate" on the "Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Plugins" page to test this.

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Worked for one day and then the same problem recurred. Now it seems to take longer for FF to fail. But, if I am away from my computer for an hour and return, pages do not load. When I try to Close FF, it appears to close but when I open it again I get a FF is still running error message. When I hit Close FF, I get the same Profile Cannot be Loaded message. When I try to End Process of the FF.exe 32, it will not end. Only remedy is to restart my computer. I'm about to give up and go the the less attractive option of using a different browser.

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What security software (firewall, anti-virus) do you have?

Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

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I use the regular Windows 7 Security Essentials and Malwarebytes. Occasionally I have run Spybot. In fact, I thought this problem began after running Spybot. Thought I might have deleted some cookies that shouldn't have been deleted. But I have reinstalled FF since then. I will try the Safe Mode and see if I can get the problem to recur. Will report back tomorrow. Thanks for your help.

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I looked at my Spybot settings and it is set to look for "bad" cookies, etc. My understanding is that Spybot does not run in the background but only when I run it manually. However, I unchecked the FF boxes so that Spybot does not mess with FF cookies now. Hoping that is the root cause but not optimistic.

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Were you able to solve the problem? If not I was having the same issue, pages would stop loading after a few mins. I posted the step I took to solve the problem here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1052489#answer-707100

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Tried all that. Totally uninstalled FF. Reinstalled fresh copy. Had to get my bookmarks, add ons, etc. loaded back on. Was very hopeful. Twenty minutes after walking away from my computer the same damn thing happened for the umpteenth time. Nothing would load. When I closed FF and tried to restart I get a message that FF is already running. Close button and Task Manager were of no help. Then get the "profile inaccessible" error message. I give up. While I like the FF interface, I need a browser that doesn't force me to restart my computer every time I'm gone for twenty minutes. Reluctantly going to Chrome. Thanks for your efforts. Maybe someday FF will make a browser that actually works on my computer. Very frustrated user here.