Sorry to hear that the forum lost your question.

I'm not sure I understand why you need an old version of Firefox. Were you way behind in updates? Normally when you install the current version, it will seamlessly update/convert any obsolete files in your profile folder to current versions.

Perhaps I'm answering the wrong question. If the question is: "how do I get a new installation of Firefox to use all my old settings" then I can give you a way to do that.

This assumes you might have data in your new Firefox that you don't want to overwrite and preserves your current profile.

Go ahead and open your old profile folder in a Windows Explorer folder. At this level you should see a bookmarkbackups folder, among others. Later you'll copy the entire contents of the old profile folder to a new location on your C drive.

Overview

These are the steps:

1. Create a new Firefox profile
2. Remove everything from that new profile folder
3. Copy in everything from the old profile folder

Create a new Firefox profile (Windows)

Exit Firefox and start up in the Profile Manager by pasting the following into the Start menu search box (or Run dialog) and pressing Enter:

firefox.exe -P

Do not delete anything here! Any time you want to switch profiles, exit Firefox and return to this dialog.

Click the Create Profile button, assign a name like OldSettings, and skip the option to change the folder location. Then select that new profile in the dialog and start Firefox.

Open the New Profile folder in Windows Explorer

Firefox in the new profile should look like a factory fresh installation. Open the Troubleshooting Information page using either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• Help menu > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table, click the "Show Folder" button. Firefox will launch your brand new profile folder in Windows Explorer.

Leaving that folder open, switch back to Firefox, and Exit. Either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
• (menu bar) File > Exit

When Firefox closes, the profile folder should be front and center, or you can activate it using the Task bar.

Copy Old Data in Place of New

In that new profile folder, select all the contents and delete.

Leaving that window open, switch over to your old profile folder. At this level you should see a file named places.sqlite. If that isn't visible, try moving up a level until you find it.

Select everything (Ctrl+a) and Copy (either right-click > Copy or Ctrl+c).

Switch to the empty new profile folder in other window and Paste (either right-click > Paste or Ctrl+v). This may take a minute since some of the files are large.

Start Firefox

Firefox should start up in that new profile with the resurrected old profile data. Success?

Thanks for your detailed reply. The version of Firefox on the old machine worked well for me, I think it was a fairly recent version, maybe one of the 29s. I'm currently using the latest version and don't like it. "web slice"? And don't want to spend time trying to reconfigure it. I have my hands full setting up the new machine, installing programs etc etc.

So with all the profile info, and other FF files, from the old machine there should be an indication of which version of FF was on that machine. But where?

Maybe someone else knows where to look.

Obviously there are security ramifications to using old versions of Firefox, as described in the support article: Install an older version of Firefox.

What is "web slice"?

Near the top of the page, just below the address bar, of the current version of FF, there are four links: Most visited, Getting started, Suggested sites, and Web Slice Gallery.

Thanks for the link. I'll give an earlier version a try.

Oh... Firefox must have grabbed those last 3 from the default IE bookmarks when it installed. Feel free to delete them.

I don't use IE so I wouldn't know that. How do I delete them?

How do you delete bookmarks from the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox? You can use the right-click context menu, or if you prefer to delete in bulk, you can use the Library dialog where you can multi-select.

To call up the Library dialog, previously called the Bookmarks Organizer, you can use either:

• Ctrl+Shift+b
• "Show All Bookmarks" on the Bookmarks menu

If you meant how to delete them from IE, they would be on the Links bar or perhaps in the Windows Favorites folder. But... if you aren't going to use IE, no rush tracking them down there.

OK sorry for the delay in replying, there's so much work in getting a new pc set up, and I'm still not finished. But I want to continue with what we began, if possible, using a 29 version (the last one that has the ability to block or at least not store the Google PREF cookie).

But in the meantime I have accumulated some new bookmarks that I want to save along with the old bookmarks. Is there a not too complicated way to merge the two sets? The new ones are using v. 37.

Firefox 29 is not secure; Mozilla discloses security flaws after each new release. Also, the unblockable Google PREF cookie set when downloading the bad sites list is not used when you visit the Google website (you have complete control over website cookies).

If you want to save your current bookmarks to merge into another set later, add a couple steps to your process:

(1) Export current cookies to an HTML-format file. This article has the steps: Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks.

(2) Restore the old bookmarks, completely replacing your current set. (Whatever procedure you've decided to use.)

(3) Import the HTML-format file you created. This article has the steps: Import Bookmarks from an HTML file.

(4) Use the Library dialog to move the contents of the imported bookmarks folder to their desired end locations.

Thanks for the reply.

RE the Google PREF cookie part, I don't understand your statement. It stays on my machine in FF v 37 all the time. I've tried many ways to stop it. See this thread in Stack Overflow.

Instead of those extra steps to preserve the new bookmarks, is there a way to convert them to a text file that I can save elsewhere, and later choose the bookmarks I want to manually add to the new Firefox?

hiker1 said

RE the Google PREF cookie part, I don't understand your statement. It stays on my machine in FF v 37 all the time. I've tried many ways to stop it. See this thread in Stack Overflow.

What I mean is, that PREF cookie is not sent to Google when you browse its website. You have one PREF cookie for purposes of downloading SafeBrowsing data and a different PREF cookie (or no PREF cookie) for purposes of web browsing.

hiker1 said

Instead of those extra steps to preserve the new bookmarks, is there a way to convert them to a text file that I can save elsewhere, and later choose the bookmarks I want to manually add to the new Firefox?

I suggest exporting the HTML format and then opening it in Firefox. Although HTML can be dense, it consists mostly of links and the associated page titles. I'm not sure of a convenient way to convert it to a plain text list, although I think I still have an old "Bookmarklet" that harvests links out of pages and might do the trick. (It's too late tonight to dig that up, sorry.)