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Firefox lost saved passwords for second time (Windows 10 FF 80.0.1)

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

Earl A
Earl A
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For the second time in the past couple of weeks I have attempted to log into a website, found the password missing, then found all my passwords missing. I restored 3 different Mozilla folders from backup: User AppData>Roaming, AppData>Local, and ProgramData with no success.

I managed to recover my passwords by logging out of my FF, logging back in, and syncing with Lockwise on my Android phone; however losing passwords is a PIA. Why would this be happening and where are the passwords stored so I can recover from backup if necessary?

For the second time in the past couple of weeks I have attempted to log into a website, found the password missing, then found all my passwords missing. I restored 3 different Mozilla folders from backup: User AppData>Roaming, AppData>Local, and ProgramData with no success. I managed to recover my passwords by logging out of my FF, logging back in, and syncing with Lockwise on my Android phone; however losing passwords is a PIA. Why would this be happening and where are the passwords stored so I can recover from backup if necessary?

All Replies (4)

FredMcD
FredMcD
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What about the rest of your profile? Settings, bookmarks, history, passwords . . . .

In the event that the passwords information is lost, you should record all information in a separate text file somewhere else on your hard drive, or written down. You can easily copy and paste if you need to do so. If you are concerned about someone else looking at that file, you can compress it using a password.

FredMcD
FredMcD
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Look on your desktop. Do you see a folder called; Old Firefox? Look inside. Look for the folder with the latest creation date.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible

Earl A
Earl A Question owner
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I used FF for a bit this morning before attempting a login requiring a PW so everything else probably there. I have far too many logins to backup manually; however the link to the back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles was helpful, thank you. I'm not sure I restored this folder from my backup when attempting to recover my PW so I've made a note for future reference.

The big question is why would my logins disappear? I might understand it happening once during a FF or Windows update but not twice. Windows did an update reboot last night. Is there an issue with Lockwise requiring a fresh signin following a reboot? If so, shouldn't FF prompt for a Lockwise signin when restarted?

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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In Firefox 80 you can export and import the logins in Lockwise (about:login).

Note that you may need to toggle a pref to true on the about:config page to enable this function as stated in the import/export articles.