Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Share Posted December 18, 2016 So based on the other thread I have here, i couldn't go into the drive & save bookmarks etc so i followed the advice on saving the Profile folder which I did. I then formatted the hard drive, installed FireFox & came to restore the profile. To do this i went to C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox There was a folder called "Profiles" which i renamed to "Profiles.old". There's also a "Profiles.ini" file in that folder which i left alone. So i copied the backed up Profiles folder from my USB drive into this folder where it sat alongside the renamed "Profiles.old" folder. Once it had finished copying there (347mb) i then opened FireFox Only to be greeted with the message "Your FireFox Profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible". 1) What have i done wrong? 2) How can i fix it? I'm not so bothered about the saved usernames & passwords, although it'd be nice. It's the bookmarks i want because there's so many of them. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted December 18, 2016 Subscriber² Share Posted December 18, 2016 Do you sync Firefox? Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707408 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neyht Member Posted December 18, 2016 Member Share Posted December 18, 2016 You left the profiles.ini file alone. You need to edit it in notepad and point it to the new profile folder name. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707410 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 13 minutes ago, Gary7 said: Do you sync Firefox? Not that I know of? Sync FireFox with what? Sorry if that sounds stupid but you lost me. You're going to have to hold my hand on this one i'm afraid. 11 minutes ago, Ned said: You left the profiles.ini file alone. You need to edit it in notepad and point it to the new profile folder name. Except the 'new' folder is called Profiles. It's like this.... I access the folder & there's a folder which we'll call folder#1, it's name is "Profiles". I rename this to "Profiles.old". I then get the Profiles folder that i want (we'll call this folder#2) & copy it across. The name of that folder is "Profiles". So if the .ini is just pointing at a folder called "Profiles" then the new (Folder#2) folder should fit the bill right? On a side note, i opened both Profiles folders, both the new & old & the content of each are very different. There's a lot more in the new folder (folder#1) than there is in the old one (folder#2 - the one that i want). Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707428 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted December 18, 2016 Subscriber² Share Posted December 18, 2016 You can sync Firefox with a Firefox Account and it saves all of your data including your profile. If you ever got a new PC all you would have to do is install Firefox and sync it with your account and you would have everything back, pw-bm's etc and or whatever you choose to sync. I use it as there is not really a need to save Firefox with a program like Hekasoft Backup & Restore 0.53. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707448 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 Oh right i get you. No i don't do that. Is there any way to get round this problem from the position i'm in? Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707460 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 Oh right i get you. No i don't do that. Is there any way to get round this problem from the position i'm in When i reinstalled Windows & then Firefox, i went to the profile folder of the 'new' FireFox profile. The contents were like so... Like i said, plenty. But when i went to the old profile which i had saved (basically from another hard drive which had Windows installed i was able to access the hard drive i couldn't boot to. I followed the advice in the other thread, going to the listed directory & just copied that Profile folder to my USB drive.) The contents of the old Profile folder are like so... Couldn't be any more different really. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707468 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted December 18, 2016 Subscriber² Share Posted December 18, 2016 7 minutes ago, Technique said: Oh right i get you. No i don't do that. Is there any way to get round this problem from the position i'm in When i reinstalled Windows & then Firefox, i went to the profile folder of the 'new' FireFox profile. The contents were like so... Like i said, plenty. But when i went to the old profile which i had saved (basically from another hard drive which had Windows installed i was able to access the hard drive i couldn't boot to. I followed the advice in the other thread, going to the listed directory & just copied that Profile folder to my USB drive.) The contents of the old Profile folder are like so... Couldn't be any more different really. Put all of the above in a folder called Profiles which should be located in C:\username\appdata\roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\ XXXXX The xxxx is your Profile or profiles. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707474 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neyht Member Posted December 18, 2016 Member Share Posted December 18, 2016 You copied files from C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\local instead of C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming. If this is the case then you probably only have the firefox cache. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707490 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 So i should merge the 2 folders? @Gary7. Hmm not sure why i backed up from local. I remember following a how-to link from somewhere Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707530 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neyht Member Posted December 18, 2016 Member Share Posted December 18, 2016 Make sure you're looking in the right spot, but from what you posted it looks like you only have your cache files...which aren't very useful. You could probably import settings from chrome? Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707542 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted December 18, 2016 Subscriber² Share Posted December 18, 2016 48 minutes ago, Ned said: You copied files from C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\local instead of C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming. If this is the case then you probably only have the firefox cache. My entire profile is located there: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other ... Profile folder - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base Profile folder - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707548 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neyht Member Posted December 18, 2016 Member Share Posted December 18, 2016 12 minutes ago, Gary7 said: My entire profile is located there: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other ... Profile folder - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base Profile folder - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base Judging by what he posted his backup is from C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default, which is firefox cache and whatever else. The folder structure is pretty much the same except local instead of roaming. Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707560 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Technique Posted December 18, 2016 Author Share Posted December 18, 2016 I had a bit of a brainwave I remember creating an image of the hard drive back in September with Acronis. I'll have saved some bookmarks since then i guess but not too many. So i went on to my USB hard drive & found it .. in "Roaming" this time. Got the "places.sqlite" file, copied it over & voila .... plenty of bookmarks restored. Are there any other key files such as "places.sqlite", such as a file for usernames/passwords & also extensions & themes? +Gary7 and Neyht 2 Share Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707572 Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Gary7 Subscriber² Posted December 18, 2016 Subscriber² Share Posted December 18, 2016 24 minutes ago, Ned said: Judging by what he posted his backup is from C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxx.default, which is firefox cache and whatever else. The folder structure is pretty much the same except local instead of roaming. The local profile has the cache the raoming profile has the PW's, BM's, Extensions, History...etc Link to comment https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1316798-firefox-unable-to-restore-profile-help/#findComment-597707578 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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