Firefox Completely broke since yesterday.

[MaestroDaVinci]

Hello i'm new to this forum and i hope i'm writing in the right place. I will try to explain my situation as completely as possible.
Since yesterday Firefox completely broke. First it began with the return to previous versions of my bookmarks and settings of my addons. Then today it started to not close and crash every time when i wait long enough. I tried uninstalling firefox, it didn't work at all every time i uninstall it even with a program that deletes everything when i install a fresh copy of firefox it's like it was never uninstalled except for history and cookies everything else is still there. I tried to delete the profile manually and still it doesn't work. Today i got into returning to firefox 55 from 55.0.3 and that still didn't fix it and now i'm using 54.0.1 and still it has the same problems i experienced. I tried to search for solution, but i can't find anything. I can't even start in safe mode because it crashes on close so it doesn't react to the safe mode. I even scanned my computer with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and with my antivirus program.

What should i do?

[DanRaisch]

Close all applications and reboot the computer.
Delete any downloaded or partially downloaded Firefox installer files.
Clear the browser cache (of whatever browser you are using to download FF) and the Windows Temp directory.
Shutdown any anti-virus software you are running.
Download a new copy of the full installer from www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all
Delete the directory C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
Delete the directory C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
Run the installer.
Restart the anti-virus program.

[MaestroDaVinci]

This is a good advice, but i want to restore some things from previous working versions of backups that i have made 3 days ago so will that work? Because i don't want to loose my history, my cookies and my bookmarks.

[LIMPET235]

You will not lose anything because all your "stuff" is in the Profile folder.... provided that it's still available.
ref; > http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
To transfer only the necessary "stuff",
ref; > http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... _-_Firefox

[DanRaisch]

You will not lose anything because all your "stuff" is in the Profile folder.... provided that it's still available.

Well, yes, but my instructions included deleting the profile folder.
How did you back-up the profile? Just make a copy or did you use some back-up utility? Also, note that the failure of Firefox to run or even launch may indicate problems in the profile rather than in the program itself.

[MaestroDaVinci]

I backed it up with MozBackup a few days ago. The problem is that when i restore stuff like cookies, history and bookmarks there is a problem and it begins the same state of things that i mentioned before. And before i start with all that process: This part C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird i don't know how to do because there is no such folder.

[DanRaisch]

Using Windows search function, in what diectory is the file profiles.ini located on your system?

[MaestroDaVinci]

Doesn't matter. My main problem was Grease Monkey. Something in the addon has been making it force Firefox to hang for a long time now i disabled it and so far there are no problems. I don't know about the other problems that i mentioned, but so far the hanging of firefox is gone.

[DanRaisch]

Thanks for posting your findings, and good luck.

[MaestroDaVinci]

Today i got again the return to previous date of my bookmarks. I don't know what is going on.

[dickvl]

When Firefox detects that there is a problem with places.sqlite then Firefox might silently remove this file and create a new places.sqlite database.
In this case Firefox will rebuild the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup.
This will involve clearing the history as well.

Are you using "Clear history when Firefox closes" to clear history?
Are you using any external cleanup software to clear data in the profile folder?

See also:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locked_or_dam ... ces.sqlite