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I get an error message Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It maybe missing or inaccessible." I tried your on-line help but was not able to fix the problem.

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Hello, my problem started when I was unable to go full screen in youtube. Nothing happened when I clicked on the full screen logo. Trying to fix it I deleted one of two Firefox profiles. I got the error message and Firefox does not open. I de-installed Firefox and then re-installed it, but get the same error message. I'm doing all this out of Safari. I have an iMac, version 10.10. I do have the Firefox profile on a page named Profiles. At some point I copied the content of this profile page into what I found to be an empty Firefox profile page, but it still would not work. I wish you had phone support. I'd appreciate your help. If I can't fix this I won't be able to ever use Firefox again. Thanks!

Hello, my problem started when I was unable to go full screen in youtube. Nothing happened when I clicked on the full screen logo. Trying to fix it I deleted one of two Firefox profiles. I got the error message and Firefox does not open. I de-installed Firefox and then re-installed it, but get the same error message. I'm doing all this out of Safari. I have an iMac, version 10.10. I do have the Firefox profile on a page named Profiles. At some point I copied the content of this profile page into what I found to be an empty Firefox profile page, but it still would not work. I wish you had phone support. I'd appreciate your help. If I can't fix this I won't be able to ever use Firefox again. Thanks!

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You need to locate the profiles.ini file or use the Profile Manager to create a new profile.

See:


This is usually caused by 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.

You can use one of these to make Firefox create a new default profile or reuse an existing profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
    If you still have an existing profile then click "Choose Folder" and select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile.

You should find the profiles.ini file in this hidden location:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/
  • Windows: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\
  • Linux: ~/.mozilla/firefox/