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Search Engines gone from search box (FF V20.0)

  • 5 replies
  • 23 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by rgwr

smokeybehr
smokeybehr
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The search engines are gone in the search box in FF V20.0. When I click the icon, it opens up the dialog box, where none of the search engines that I previously had are listed. When I click the "manage search engines" link, nothing happens.

Possibly related to W7 Roaming profile enter key issue.

Had to bump back to V19.0 for everything to work right.

The search engines are gone in the search box in FF V20.0. When I click the icon, it opens up the dialog box, where none of the search engines that I previously had are listed. When I click the "manage search engines" link, nothing happens. Possibly related to W7 Roaming profile enter key issue. Had to bump back to V19.0 for everything to work right.

All Replies (5)

Andrew
Andrew
  • Moderator
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It sounds like you have a third party program that has taken over your search engine, home page, and/or the default new tab page. Fortunately, this can be remedied easily:

  1. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button (Tools menu in Windows XP), and then click Add-ons. The Add-ons Manager tab will open.
  2. In the Add-ons Manager tab, select the Extensions panel.
  3. Select the toolbar you wish to remove.
  4. Click the remove button.
  5. Click "Restart now" if it pops up. Your tabs will be saved and restored after the restart.

After Firefox restarts, install the Search Reset Tool. This will remove the rest of the traces of this program from your Firefox.

For further information, please read Remove a toolbar that has taken over your Firefox search or home page.

Did this fix the problem? Let us know!

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You can check if you still have the XML files of the default search engines including Google in the searchplugins folder in Firefox program folder.

If not then you need to reinstall Firefox.

You can try to delete the search.json file and a possible search.sqlite file in the Firefox profile folder.

You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder

Firefox will rebuild the search.json file from the default search engines in the searchplugins folder in the Firefox program folder and the searchplugins folder in the Firefox profile folder.

rgwr
rgwr
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My xml files are missing and although I've reinstalled Firefox they haven't reappeared. Do I have to uninstall it and start from scratch? I don't want to lose all my personalisation.

Thanks.

jrdp_18
jrdp_18
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I had this problem too. I uninstalled Firefox without removing the other data. But I did clean the registry. Then installed Firefox 20.0.1 The search engines are back now.

rgwr
rgwr
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In my case the issue was that my profile was stored on a NAS device. Once I moved it back to the PC then Firefox worked OK. Can't back it up easily now, though. This is a known fault I picked up on the forum.