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

Firefox cannot find profile, even after deleting and re-installing.

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I un-installed firefox when the problem first started, then re-installed it. Still cannot find profile. I went through the Profile Manager Wizard, but that didn't work. It couldn't find the program. I'm not on firefox now since it won't load.

I un-installed firefox when the problem first started, then re-installed it. Still cannot find profile. I went through the Profile Manager Wizard, but that didn't work. It couldn't find the program. I'm not on firefox now since it won't load.

All Replies (2)

more options

When you uninstalled Firefox, hopefully you didn't choose to remove your personal data, since that would of course wipe out your old profile.

If you check the following places, can you find any profile folders that Firefox is not seeing?

  • Windows desktop: Old Firefox Data (profile folders are moved here during the Reset process)
  • Default profile location: type or paste the following in the Start menu search box and press Enter (or use a Windows Explorer window):
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
more options

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.

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

You can use one of these to make Firefox create/use a new default profile:

  • Delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new default profile
  • Use the Profile Manager to create a new profile
  • Use "Choose Folder" when you create a new profile to select the location of a lost profile and recover this profile