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firefox won't start: profile can't be loaded--missing or inaccessible

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

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firefox won't start--have had problems for months with certain sites (secure banking and insurance sites) had to reset firefox several times to access sites. Happened again yesterday: reset and then couldn't load firefox with the above error meassages--tried solutions posted-nothing worked. Hate ie and chrome and your customer support has been very weak. Have a nice day.

firefox won't start--have had problems for months with certain sites (secure banking and insurance sites) had to reset firefox several times to access sites. Happened again yesterday: reset and then couldn't load firefox with the above error meassages--tried solutions posted-nothing worked. Hate ie and chrome and your customer support has been very weak. Have a nice day.

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A possible cause is a problem with the profiles.ini file and the profile marked as Default=1 in this file is no longer present on the hard drive.

  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/
  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/
  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
  • Use "Choose Folder" to recover an existing profile if there is still one present