Deleted and recovered old Firefox profile
Hi
I have been using Waterfox since 2016 because of native 64-bit architecture and Firefox did not have a 64-bit version back then. I had two profiles (Default and Old) and continued using my 'Default' profile with Waterfox and stopped using Firefox altogether.
I downloaded 64-bit version of Firefox today and tested both profiles, they were working as they were supposed and loaded all restored sessions, bookmarks, history and tabs etc. etc. I also had a useless 'Old' profile on Waterfox that I wanted to deleted but deleted 'Old' profile (including all the files) on Firefox by mistake on next boot up. Fortunately, I recovered the profile folder under 'roaming' using a data recovery program successfully. I tried creating a new profile and selected recovered folder as main profile directory, but this time Firefox did not load anything at all and opened like it was a brand new profile. I, then, also recovered profile folder under 'local' thinking both folders might be required and placed it where it belonged but still, I cannot get the profile to load in Firefox as it first loaded up. I am using Windows 7 Service Pack 1 if that makes any difference.
I have not touched Firefox since then and writing this from my Waterfox tabs just to keep Firefox profiles as clean as possible. I was wondering if there is something else I need to recover or some registry entries which were deleted when I deleted the profile via Firefox Profile Manager itself? The data is still intact in both 'local' and 'roaming' profile directories -- I can see the files for bookmarks, session restores, add-ons and extensions, numerous backup files, history, cookies among other files so the data is there but I am unable to get Firefox to load them normally. Is there a file or registry entry I need to recover/amend or perhaps a file I need to delete so Firefox can try to scan and reload everything from the profile folder?
Any help is much appreciated, thanks!
All Replies (4)
When you recovered the deleted Profile, what about the profiles.ini file?
The profiles.ini must list all Profiles otherwise the Profile Manager doesn't even know that Profile is present.
profiles.ini is one folder level above the Profiles, at the same level as the /Profiles/ in the Roaming path of Users.
Also, if the profiles.ini is edited to add or remove a Profile the formatting has to be correct; nothing added or removed for it to work with the Profile Manager. I have broken it more times than I care to remember and then was left scratching my head as to why Firefox didn't work. "Haste makes waste [of time]" when you commit a boo-boo when editing that file.
Don't worry about the Local path "Profile" folder, that set of folders will be created (or repaired) the first time Firefox is launched should it be missing or broken.
Hey the-edmeister
Thanks for your reply, profile.ini seems to be fine and configured properly.
The issue is not that profile does not show up, it does show up in the list and is "attached" to the right directory but Firefox does not seem to pick up the data from files within for some reason. Perhaps a file essential for loading process is corrupt (although I doubt it), but something is definitely not letting Firefox load the whole profile. It does not even show any errors, just loads up like there is nothing in the directory and it's a brand new profile.
EDIT: I will try to uninstall and reinstall Firefox to see if it resolves the issue.
Modified by Learn
Only the profile under roaming is important as this location stores your personal data.
Note that a successful recovery doesn't necessarily mean that all files are healthy and that none of the files are corrupted. This merely means that all clusters that the recovery utility found were not in use. It is quite possible that some clusters had been reused and in such a case the recovered file is of no use. Best would be to create a new profile and copy important data from the recovered profile to the new profile and verify that the new profile still works.
Yes, you are right. I found it out earlier today and it seems like some of files are empty despite being several KBs in size. Thanks for everyone's help anyway, looks like it won't be possible to recover all the data and restore the profile.