Okay, now I REALLY hate Firefox

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anderton Prime
  • 19 comments
  • 1,103 views
Anderton Prime

Anderton Prime

Messages
2,760
I turned on my computer the other day and started up Firefox. When it opened, it wasn't a fully maximized wondow, which has never happened before. It also asked me for my gmail password in a seperate window, which I have never seen before. Then, when I fiunally got into the browser, I found that ALL MY BOOKMARKS HAD DISAPPEARED. This has happened with earlier versions of Firefox to me, but on an entirely different computer. I am the only one who uses my computer, and no one else can get in because it's password protected. And get this, I still had all my toolbar bookmarks (the ones that go in their own toolbar above the tabs bar). What the hell? Is there any way to get my bookmarks back?
 
There's only ever been one user and one profile ever since I installed Firefox. I tried switching profiles, but there's only one, called "default," and it is what I've been using the whole time. I realize Firefoz is the best browser, so I don't need a lecture about how much better it is than IE. I need help figuring out what happened!

And why would I still have my bookmarks from the bookmarks toolbar folder (the actual toolbar itself was empty upon the fateful startup of Firefox; I had to go to Manage Bookmarks and drag and drop them back onto the toolbar from the bookmarks folder)?
 
Anderton Prime
There's only ever been one user and one profile ever since I installed Firefox. I tried switching profiles, but there's only one, called "default," and it is what I've been using the whole time. I realize Firefoz is the best browser, so I don't need a lecture about how much better it is than IE. I need help figuring out what happened!

And why would I still have my bookmarks from the bookmarks toolbar folder (the actual toolbar itself was empty upon the fateful startup of Firefox; I had to go to Manage Bookmarks and drag and drop them back onto the toolbar from the bookmarks folder)?
Click to expand...

*sigh*

Some older versions of Firefox tend to switch profiles by itself. Mind telling us what version your using?

Overall, it sounds like something you did to screw up Firefox.
 
It sounds to me like Firefox was running in the background (it might've gotten stuck upon exiting; you can check by opening the process explorer in the windows task manager and looking for multiple instances of Firefox. End all of the processes). When this happens, Firefox generally opens a new profile automatically.

Restarting the computer would also fix this.
 
This has happened to me, twice. Just use system restore, simple as that.

It happens (if i recall correctly) when firefox becomes unresponsive or slow, and you close it and re-open it again. When you get the profile thing popping up, you have to kill both firefox.exe processes in task manager and it goes away. Then you can open it again.

Since it's kinda happened already, though, just restore to an earlier date i like i said.
 
You know, this is the 6th time I have tried to open this thread, every time I click the link, FF disappears, and I have to wait for the feedback to be sent. Hmmm
 
Happened to me,, I used run-> something else, but I don't remember it right now, try this:


First close firefox and then check the task manager to make sure it isn't running, click the processes tab and close the firefox.exe process if it's running

right click the firefox shortcut and

change the target from

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

to

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -profilemanager

.... quotes and all just like i have it, hit ok

then click the icon and pick the default profile, hit ok

Got it off:http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t333638.html
 
No, this happened to me before.

You have to recover everything from some folder. It's all there, though. I made a thread on it, I think, so search GTP for it. The answer was posted.
 
Happened a few times to me, when my computer crashed while firefox was opened.

Look for the file bookmarks.bak in the folder:

"C:\Documents and Settings\(Your windows account)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(Bunch of letters and numbers).default\"

Rename it to .html and import within Firefox (import may not be required, if it didn't created a new profile folder).
 
HACKr
Happened to me too. *Restart*
Click to expand...
It's happened to me a couple of times and a restart didn't solve the problem.

But I found a fix that I think involved delving into the Windows>Documents and Settings>[yourname]>Application Data>Mozilla>Firefox folder and doing something.

It's an annoying bug alright. I thought it's the kind of thing an open source and very regularly updated program like Firefox would have fixed by now. What version of Firefox was involved with this particular instance?

It hasn't happened to me in a long time.


KM.
 
Well, thanks everyone for their prompt and (mostly) patient responses. I have tried each and every method described on here to fix this problem which, thankfully, I was not imagining after all. First, I closed and re-opened Firefox. Didn't work (and thanks for whoever suggested that). Then I restarted my computer. Didn't work. Then I uninstalled and re-downloaded and reinstalled Firefox (latest version). Didn't work. Then I tried doing a system restore; this probelm happened last week, and I restored to three weeks ago. Didn't work. Then I tried re-naming the target as per Keichi's instructions. Didn't work. Finally I located, renamed and imported the bookmarks.bak file into Firefox. Didn't work.

So me and Firefox are through. This is an absolute bull**** problem for a program as big and as popular as firefox to be having. It's never been fixed, as I am always running the latest version of Firefox. All my bookmarks for teachers' college are gone, as are all my school-related research links. I guess I should have backed them up, but so many people haven't even heard of this problem, I can hardly be blamed much for that.

And before some of you start telling me how bad IE is (bearing in mind that I never ONCE said I would ever consider returning to a browser somehow even crappier and more problem-filled than Forefox), I guess I'm going to have to start looking at Opera after all, because Netscape can go suck rocks.
 
If these bookmarks are important, it's quite obvious that you should have a backup somewhere. According to the POOMA* institute, each half-second on earth, an hard drive dies. Think about that.

I agree that what happened is quite annoying, but for me, nowhere as much as dealing with popups/ads, lack of smart features, lack of a plugin community, and bazillions of security flaws. Your call.



* Pulled out of my ass
 
I use Yahoo! Bookmarks, and it works incredibly well, especially with the companion toolbar. I like the idea of using an external server for my bookmarks, since they can be accessed from anywhere (which was always helpful during school, when I was in a library or some such). It also eliminates this kind of stuff, where the browser loses or corrupts your bookmark file, or the hard drive crashes. You might consider it, if your bookmarks are that important to you.
 

Latest Posts

Back