firefox 'reset'

[pcg79]

hi

ive got Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050321 Firefox/1.0.2

rarely (maybe once in a few months), even with older versions, firefox would 'reset'. what i mean by that, is i reboot the pc, then come back and firefox's settings (connection, those notices that come up with 'alert me when leaving encrypted page' etc, links on toolbar, home page etc etc) are all reverted to factory default.

history, however is still there as a cookies and saved passwords.

any ideas whats going on?

 

[Jonty]

Hi pcg79

It sounds like either your Firefox installation or profile are corrupt. Your best bet would be to uninstall Firefox, delete the Firefox folder should there be any files left over, then delete your profile folder too (C:\Documents and Settings\Your Username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox (default on Windows XP)).

Then, simply install Firefox afresh (1.0.3 is the latest official release) and setup your profile as required. You will need to import your bookmarks and install any extensions afresh. Thereafter, with every new release of Firefox just make sure you uninstall Firefox before installing the new version. This ensures any compatability issues don't cause you problems (N.B. uninstalling Firefox leaves your profile intact).

This would be my gut reaction, anyway, as installing over the top or other such problems have long caused a lot of problems with Firefox since the days it was called 'Phoenix'. Whether there is a specific issue you're experiencing, though, I'm not sure. MozillaZine Forums is probably the place to go for specialist advice.

Kind Regards

 

[Shovel]

Firefox's one big problem at the mo is this. There are a number of discrete issues that can cause the same issue. I have known bookmarks to be lost from a profile or (as sounds more like your problem pcg) Fx will auto-generate a new profile for some reason.

When in use, Firefox will "lock" your profile. If for some reason it doesn't get unlocked, Fx will automatically create a new profile - hence the apparent reset of settings.

In this situation no data has been lost, so you can get your profile back in a number of ways. If all you want is the bookmarks then you'll find a file called "bookmarks.html" in the following location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<something>.default

You can copy bookmarks.html to your desktop and then import them again through the bookmarks manager.

Alternatively, you can start Firefox up with the profile manager, which is done using the command line "-p" switch, so go to a command prompt and type:

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

You'll get an aged looking dialog up to choose a profile from. With a bit of luck, you should see your old profile in there (probably called "Default"). If you select that and then check the "Don't prompt for a profile at start-up" check box you should set it back as the normal profile again.

Finally, you can do it manually by editing the profiles.ini file in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini

Open this is Wordpad and you'll see something like this:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/ggur1emk.default
Default=1

[Profile1]
Name=Tester
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/3ku9a153.Tester

In this case, I have two profiles. [Profile0] is my default, as indicated by the "Default=1" line. If you find you've got a [Profile1], [Profile2], etc entry which has a "Default=1" setting, remove that line and append it to the [Profile0] section instead.

This should start up Firefox with the correct profile again. It shouldn't be necessary to reinstall Firefox to fix this unless none of the above works.

Hope that helps.

 

[Jonty]

Great post, Ben I would bump your rep but you're being far too useful, so I have to 'spead it around' a little more, hehe.

Hope it gets sorted, pcg79.

Kind Regards

 

[phlash]

Shovel - You've spent waaay too long playing with Firefox nice description of the problem and a solution too. If Mozilla does this to me I'll be checking back again...

Phil.

 

[Shovel]

No probs Phlash; Firefox is my bitch. Or possibly the other way around, sometimes I'm not sure.

A useful resource is the MozillaZine Knowledge Base, which I used to contribute to periodically.