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HAving issues with 20.0 update, No serach engines load in the update, so how do I get them to laod?

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  • Last reply by zyork

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Using older Dell machines at work running off of XP Service Pack 2. Just updated two machines to Firefox 20.0 and no search engines loaded during the update. The address bar and the search bar do not function. The manage search engines tab does not allow you to add search engines either. Bookmarks imported from earlier version do function fine, but new searches and unbookmarked url's cannont be reached without a search engine. So, how do I load search engines into Firefox?

Using older Dell machines at work running off of XP Service Pack 2. Just updated two machines to Firefox 20.0 and no search engines loaded during the update. The address bar and the search bar do not function. The manage search engines tab does not allow you to add search engines either. Bookmarks imported from earlier version do function fine, but new searches and unbookmarked url's cannont be reached without a search engine. So, how do I load search engines into Firefox?

All Replies (3)

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Oh, yeah, tried going to 21.0 Beta on this machine and encountered the same issue (hence the system details showing 21.0). Sorry for the confusion.

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You can check if you still have the XML files of the default search engines including Google in the searchplugins folder in Firefox program folder.

If not then you need to reinstall Firefox.


Try to use the SearchReset extension to reset some preferences to the default values.

Note that the SearchReset extension only runs once and then uninstalls automatically, so it won't show on the "Firefox > Add-ons" page (about:addons). --- You can delete the search.json file and a possible search.sqlite file in the Firefox profile folder.

Firefox will rebuild the search.json file from the default search engines in the searchplugins folder in the Firefox program folder and the searchplugins folder in the Firefox profile folder.

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Thanks for suggestions, unfortunately, nothing seemed to work. I even removed and reinstalled Firefox to no avail...