First of all back up your current profile by copying the whole of the folder including sub folders and files and put it somewhere safe; outside the Firefox program or profile paths, the Windows Desktop will do.

• see Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles <-- clickable link --

Doing that will preserve whatever info you have, including some automated bookmarks backups that Firefox makes.

I am not sure whether you may be talking partly about themes or personas

• see using themes with firefox

Or whether you are asking about something else, maybe you have two separate user accounts and separate profiles for each. (difficult to see how a cat could delete two profiles).

It would help if you could explain in a bit more detail exactly what is lost.

Also see

• backing up and restoring bookmarks
  Please read the warnings in that.
  • I strongly suggest your first step should be to backup your current profile as explained above, then take care not to accidentally delete bookmarks by overwriting them.

Hi John99 You don't know this cat. She opens doors with her paw and jumps to the top of tall bookcases at a single bound, maybe two bounds. Only one user. I did not set it up this way either, do not know what happened. Since I wrote, I found the file for one of the two profiles I was using by doing a search on windows. I tried to duplicate it using profile manager with a new name using the instructions on Mozilla but it did not work (could be something in the os as my copy function does not always work but not sure). Any suggestions? I am mainly concerned about my lost bookmarks, although I would like the screensaver (or whatever) back if I could get it. I know I have to back up, my bad as I work in IT but have been on an extended but now obviously coming to a close mind dump vacation.

Thanks Malach01

Hi Malach01,
You may be interested in this article:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bypassing_the_Profile_Manager
  • it may help you in starting an existing profile that is not listed in profile manger
  • it also explains one way a profile may be created unintentionally

Did you find and backup your profiles ?
Both of them ?

My original post only explained how to find a profile that is in use. Another method of finding profiles is to search for them, using XPs search option. All Firefox profiles will contain a database file called places.sqlite so search for that. (It contains the working bookmarks so it is one file you may wish to backup).

I am trying to make sure you have ALL the profiles backed up before you proceed. There are several potential pitfalls

• bookmarks normally overwrite existing ones when you restore them
  but HTML bookmarks may be exported and when imported will append
• Do NOT rename profiles
  it is often unwise to rename profiles because the folder does not rename to match the new profile name, and that may lead to confusion.
• take care if ever deleting a profile.
  Profiles should be created in their own empty folder, deleting profiles destroys the folder, and any other content of that folder is also lost
• Do NOT use options from Windows or Firefox to remove personal data,
  that is likely to remove all profiles from all versions of Firefox installed. You will loose settings, bookmarks, and passwords.

Cannot find profiles in program files

That is not where they live! There are separate paths for the installation and program files (includes firefox.exe) and the profile files (includes bookmarks and bookmark backups).

• see also profiles

You could also search for files ending .json they will be bookmark backups created automatically by Firefox,or when you exported bookmarks.

Hi John99 Pardon the delay in response. I had two profiles. Actually I had one profile and then it supposedly was corrupted and I could not get into Yahoo mail so following instructions I created a second profile for the mail. I used these two profiles for a couple of years or more. During the cat episode something happened. In the past two days I was able to access the original profile (1)and copy the bookmarks to the new profile (3)that I created a couple of days ago. However, the second profile (2) which I created basically for yahoo mail also had some book marks which I wanted but I have been unable to come up with either the profile (2) or the bookmarks file from that profile in any window's based search such as "whatever" profile, .json, or places *.* or even any file with the second file's name. I am not so concerned with settings as my settings were limited and easily recreatable; I never store my password so basically it is down to the bookmarks. So, do you have any idea what happened to the other profile (2) or its bookmarks that I cannot find? Also, do I have to backup my bookmarks regularly and manually if I don't backup my hard drive or is there any way to set up the backup automatically? Thanks for your help...

Sounds rather as if the profile was lost/deleted.

Several automated methods could backup your bookmarks, even if you do not make full images of the hdd, if for instance you backup important folders such as the profile.

You may also be interested in

• http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/?addon=bookmark-backup
  i have not used this myself but it is highly recommended
• http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/
  this one is listed in a mozillazine kb