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How do you successfuly reset FireFox to what the computer removed in a reboot?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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From reinstall, FireFox won't verify my email, there is no toolbar, or menubar, And I lost all of my bookmarks. Online help keeps taking me in a no help circle.

From reinstall, FireFox won't verify my email, there is no toolbar, or menubar, And I lost all of my bookmarks. Online help keeps taking me in a no help circle.

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Do a clean reinstall of the current Firefox release and delete the Firefox program folder before installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release.

If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows Registry and settings in security software.

  • do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall the current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including data in profiles created by other Firefox versions

Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.

  • (64-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
  • (32-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"

Your personal data like bookmarks is stored in the Firefox profile folder, so you won't lose personal data when you uninstall and reinstall or update Firefox, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.

If you keep having problems then you can create a new profile to test if your current profile is causing the problem.


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You can check if have an "Old Firefox Data" folder on the desktop in case the Refresh feature in Firefox has been used and a new profile has been created.

You can check if you have an orphaned profile that isn't registered in profiles.ini and that doesn't show in the Firefox Profile Manager. You can check that by opening the current profile folder via the about:profiles page and go up one level to see if there are unlisted profiles listed. If you have found an orphaned profile then you may want to recover some personal data.

  • C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

"AppData" (XP: Application Data; Mac: ~/Library; Linux: ~/.mozilla) is a hidden folder.


You can copy files like these with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover specific data. Note that you should be cautious with copying SQLite database files if you previously had problems.

  • bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
  • bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
  • cookies.sqlite for the cookies
  • formhistory.sqlite for saved form data
  • logins.json and key3.db (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
  • cert8.db and possibly cert_override.txt for (intermediate) certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
  • persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
  • permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other Site Preferences
  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs