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Need Help Please Transferring Firefox Desktop settings from non-bootable but accessible hard drive to transfer my Firefox data to new Windows PC Hard drive with new Firefox install.

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  • Last reply by honor288

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Hi, I have an issue and hopefully an easy challenge, but I need and would appreciate your kind help.

My Windows 10 PC with Firefox Desktop installed has all my bookmarks, passwords, add-ons, configuration entries, etc. I had the unfortunate situation where my PC hard drive boot-up is corrupted, so I am unable to boot into windows. I am though able to access all of the files intact, via a USB Hard Drive dock to read, save, and be able to transfer any files from that non-bootable hard drive to a new install.

I did a new windows install with a brand new hard drive along with Firefox, but I need your help to effectively get all of those files/entries from the old hard drive and my Firefox "profile" transferred into the new drive so I can resume like before, and further back up as necessary. I do understand that I should have logged into my Firefox account and backed it up so it would have been seamless, but I am sorry I didn't.

Can you please help me and advise?

Thank you so very much.!

Hi, I have an issue and hopefully an easy challenge, but I need and would appreciate your kind help. My Windows 10 PC with Firefox Desktop installed has all my bookmarks, passwords, add-ons, configuration entries, etc. I had the unfortunate situation where my PC hard drive boot-up is corrupted, so I am unable to boot into windows. I am though able to access all of the files intact, via a USB Hard Drive dock to read, save, and be able to transfer any files from that non-bootable hard drive to a new install. I did a new windows install with a brand new hard drive along with Firefox, but I need your help to effectively get all of those files/entries from the old hard drive and my Firefox "profile" transferred into the new drive so I can resume like before, and further back up as necessary. I do understand that I should have logged into my Firefox account and backed it up so it would have been seamless, but I am sorry I didn't. Can you please help me and advise? Thank you so very much.!

All Replies (3)

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Have you looked at this firefox help link?

"How to retrieve bookmarks from a dead computer." https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1003872

Helpful?

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There may be glitches when transferring a Firefox profile among computers, but it's worth a try. If necessary, you can always use the old files for a more selective restore.

Part 1

First, set Windows to show hidden files and folders:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-hidden-files-and-folders-in-windows-97fbc472-c603-9d90-91d0-1166d1d9f4b5

Second, find the relevant profile folder on the old drive. For reference, I'll call it the "E" drive, but this would be whatever letter is assigned by Windows. Explore up

E:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

That Profiles folder typically contains at least two subfolders whose names combine a random portion and a descriptive name like "default-release".

The immediate objective is to identify the most (recently) used profile. You can use the Last Modified dates and/or double-click into the bookmarkbackups folder to see whether it has up-to-date backups. The file creation dates are embedded into the file names, for example:

bookmarks-2024-11-22_2498_gibberish=.jsonlz4

Got it?

Part 2

The idea is to transplant the entire old profile folder (not Profiles, just the individual folder) into the same location on the new PC. Then you need to educate Firefox that it's there. The following post has the steps (with a different source folder):

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1474421#answer-1687884

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I want to promptly thank you for your prompt response although I am not able to try it just yet. I expect I can review and follow your guidance and hopefully and successfully succeed in making the important transfer. I will keep you posted likely within the next week. Thanks again.

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