This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cannot transfer profile from 'old' hard drive onto new pc despite following the various instructions.

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 28 views
  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė duggabe

more options

The original PC has died but the hard drive is ok. The old pc was windows 8.1. Firefox was updated as and when automatically.

The new PC is also windows 8.1. The old hard drive has been put in a caddy and we can access all the files fine and we have found the old profile in the user /roaming/appdata etc area.

I obviously did not have the luxury of using the tool to do a backup.

We have installed the latest Firefox on the new machine and we have found the profile generated as part of the new install.

We have followed pretty well all the various instructions for copying the contents of the old profile onto the profile on the new machine but it is not recognized and none of the data is visible in Firefox. I have made sure that the contents of the profile.ini file is indicating the 'new' profile.

The Profile manager does not find the New profile.

I know that I have transferred profiles between machines the past without problems - and I at my wits end with this.

What I need is a foolproof (I feel a fool right now because nothing seems to work) to get the original profile (still on the old hard drive) on to the new machine.

What is really needed is a selection field on one of the Options tabs to point at the profile so that it can be picked up. I only want one profile . Any suggestions gratefully received.

The original PC has died but the hard drive is ok. The old pc was windows 8.1. Firefox was updated as and when automatically. The new PC is also windows 8.1. The old hard drive has been put in a caddy and we can access all the files fine and we have found the old profile in the user /roaming/appdata etc area. I obviously did not have the luxury of using the tool to do a backup. We have installed the latest Firefox on the new machine and we have found the profile generated as part of the new install. We have followed pretty well all the various instructions for copying the contents of the old profile onto the profile on the new machine but it is not recognized and none of the data is visible in Firefox. I have made sure that the contents of the profile.ini file is indicating the 'new' profile. The Profile manager does not find the New profile. I know that I have transferred profiles between machines the past without problems - and I at my wits end with this. What I need is a foolproof (I feel a fool right now because nothing seems to work) to get the original profile (still on the old hard drive) on to the new machine. What is really needed is a selection field on one of the Options tabs to point at the profile so that it can be picked up. I only want one profile . Any suggestions gratefully received.

All Replies (1)

more options

I would suggest running with the profile manager and pointing to the profile on the old hard drive. The performance won't be great, but at least you can establish if that profile is OK. Then you can work on copying it over to the new computer.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-multiple-profiles