Firefox might have created a new profile for some reason. To see whether you have another profile, try this:

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

This will open your currently active personal settings folder, also known as a Firefox profile folder, in Windows Explorer. If you navigate up one level, can you see another profile folder? The naming convention includes a lot of gibberish characters.

If you see another folder, take note of some part of its name (e.g., default is common). Then close this folder and exit Firefox.

To start Firefox in a different profile, you can use the profile manager.

Start menu > search box, type or paste

firefox.exe -P

then press Enter. Don't delete or remove anything here, just highlight the earlier profile and start Firefox. Does that one have your settings?

There is only one folder "xoff8a4z.default" as I looked for this earlier before posting for help. It even contains several Bookmark back ups daying back 2 weeks ago (bookmarks-2013-03-19.json)

Only its not loading the bookmarks. and I had to download all of my plugins (flash, silverlight, google talk + voice, etc) again.. (I only use 2 browser extensions so downloading them again was no trouble)

Did you try to reboot the computer?

Do you have an Old Firefox Data folder on the desktop in case Firefox has been reset?

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox