Firefox user settings

May 8, 2006 8:40 AM

Firefox seems to have spontaneously switched back to an older set of bookmarks and settings...

At one point in the last year Firefox, without an explanation that I can understand, wouldn't open a browser until I responded to a dialogue box and set up a different user account. So I did, unfortunately losing my tab settings, bookmarks, etc. And then one day when I clicked on the icon it offered the same dialogue box with the older user setting option, much to my joy, and I was able to choose my initial settings and restore things. Now, without warning, it's using the second user settings again.

I'm sorry if this makes no sense but it's driving me nuts. Thanks in advance for any advice.

posted by docpops to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Holy cow, I thought it was just us and our crappy computer. Know that you are not alone in your need for an explanation.
posted by cdadog at 8:44 AM on May 8, 2006

This is a bug in firefox, in a section called the "Profile Manager".

You may have been running firefox without realising (check your task manager) and when you opened another session, your original one was hung and as such, the pofile locked.

You can try these things.

1) Launch firefox with the profile manager running. You can do this using firefox.exe -p from the run prompt. Follow the prompts to see your profiles and choose the one you want

Make sure that there are no other copies of Firefox running

2). Follow the information in this link and remove all the profiles and start a fresh..
posted by Ostrich at 9:01 AM on May 8, 2006

Firefox keeps different sets of profiles. In theory two users can use different profiles and keep completely separate sets of bookmarks, cookies, and settings. In practice most people don't know about this and/or don't care to make use of it.

Exit firefox, and run "firefox.exe -profilemanager"

This will bring up the profile manager, from which you can tinker as needed.
posted by jellicle at 9:01 AM on May 8, 2006

Should it strike me as strange that there is not a simple path to get to profile manager from within the common menus on FF? Thanks for all the help.
posted by docpops at 9:40 AM on May 8, 2006