Additional information: If i lock the profiles.ini file no additional profiles are created and it loads without issue with the saved settings...

That sound rather unusual. Temporarily removing or renaming profiles.ini is a recognised method of forcing Firefox to create a new profile. The profiles.ini may be deliberately edited to point to or even to create new profiles.

• Please post the content of the present locked profiles.ini
  and the profiles.ini content that results after it is unlocked and allowed a few restarts. (edit for privacy reasons if necessary e.g. to remove actual real names).
• Try temporarily renaming profiles.ini to profiles.ini.faulty1 whilst Firefox is closed.
  • What happens on restarting Firefox ? without profiles.ini
    I would expect it to create a new profiles.ini and a new default profile.

My first guess is this may be due to malware.

• See Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

The locked and unlock file are identical with the exception of the Path.

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/te0z8j0p.default Default=1

After each restart of FireFox the Path changes to "Profiles/SomeRandomCharactershere.default" A new folder is then created beneath "profiles" to match the new path.

It is relating to a custom install file which was being tested for deployment. However having installed this on a few test users machines I cannot reverse this behavior.

When I delete/rename profiles.ini (as well as removing the entire Mozilla folder) it recreates the files and creates a new profile..and then another new profile...and then another new profile :(

Malware is not likely as this behavior is happening on multiple machines.

Something else of interest. Within each profile directory 4 folders exist: crashes, datareporting,healthreport,sessionstore-backups Nothing is created inside the folders except recovery.bak insite the sessionstore-backups.

Also of interest it's not so much each start of firefox as much as it is every start + shutdown + start of the process. I can load as many sessions as I want as long as I do not close them all. If I do a new directory is created and the profiles.ini is updated.

Do you have some (security) software that might be restoring an older copy of the profiles.ini file?

Does the time stamp of the profiles.ini file give any indication?

You can create a backup of the profiles.ini file with the correct profile folder and restore this copy.

Boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

• http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/

As it turns out AppSense is used for user customization settings among various applications. Firefox was one of them which involved deleting the profiles.ini file each time firefox.exe started. This was put into effect when App-V was being used to virtualize FireFox.

Thanks all for your help