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Lost all passwords

  • 7 replies
  • 17 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I worked in private mode, Firefox updated after that and all my passwords are gone. logins.json and key3.db are in their place, logins.json full of logins and crypted passwords, but 'saved logins' window says no logins are here. What could it be?

upd:Firefox Sync was switched on, but its password was also lost so I was needed to log in again.

upd2: Password manager says that I saved password to this page on many websites, but "View saved passwords" shows me empty form.

I worked in private mode, Firefox updated after that and all my passwords are gone. logins.json and key3.db are in their place, logins.json full of logins and crypted passwords, but 'saved logins' window says no logins are here. What could it be? upd:Firefox Sync was switched on, but its password was also lost so I was needed to log in again. upd2: Password manager says that I saved password to this page on many websites, but "View saved passwords" shows me empty form.

Modified by Reiser

All Replies (7)

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hi, first please run a full scan of your system with the free version of malwarebytes and adwcleaner as we had similar reports of other users with adware on their systems recently. Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

if the scan for malware didn't change anything yet, can you try to replicate this behaviour when you launch firefox in safe mode once? if not, maybe an addon is interfering here (and you're having loads of them)... Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems

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No, safemode doesn't solve the problem and malware & adware scans don't shows anything.

There are logins.json full of crypted logins and passwords and key3.db there and Firefox tells it saves passwords for my casuals websites, but doesn't show any of its — could it somehow lost crypting password?

I remember that I was in Private mode, install incremental beta update and restart to PM again (from private mode to private mode) — could it be the reason?

Modified by Reiser

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it would be rather unlikely i think. does a third-party tool like http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/passwordfox.html still show your passwords?

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Did you try to copy the logins.json and key3.db files to a new profile?

Create a new profile to test if your current profile is causing the problem.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.

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You can try this code in the Browser Console (leave out the trailing comments)

Services.logins.getAllLogins().length // Prints number of decryptable logins only
Services.logins.countLogins("", "", "") // Prints number of all logins including non-decryptable logins

Set devtools.chrome.enabled to true on the about:config page to enable the command line of the Browser Console.

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philipp said

Passwordfox still show your passwords?

PasswordFox shows hundreds of records with all fields except logins and passwords (it shows grabbled-wrong-encoding text in a few password fields)


cor-el said

Did you try to copy the logins.json and key3.db files to a new profile?

New profile shows same result.


cor-el said

You can try this code in the Browser Console

length = 2, as two anew saved passwords



So, it looks like FF lost key3.db decrypting key, and there is no way to restore it except brute force — am I right?

Modified by Reiser

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Are there any previous versions of the logins.json and key3.db files available?

You can check in Windows Explorer if there is a previous version of the file available.