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Ran a Windows 8 Refresh and reinstalled Firefox. Now, it will not start. Error: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

  • 4 replies
  • 9 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I have tried following the steps under Starting the Profile Manager but the error message just pops up: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

I have tried following the steps under Starting the Profile Manager but the error message just pops up: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

All Replies (4)

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Hello,

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:

Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

  1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
  2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
  3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
    • Windows:
      • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
    • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
    • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
  4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
    1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
    2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

Please report back soon!

Hope this helps!

Curtis

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Thanks for the reply. The error still occurs.

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I no longer have this question. While trying to resolve another computer problem, I indirectly fixed this one too. :)

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This is a problem with the profiles.ini file and should be fixed by deleting the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new profiles.ini file and a new default profile.