Copying FF Profile Doesn't Work in New Windows Profile

[Wiggam72]

My Windows profile is corrupted because of their updates. Several of my programs are not functioning correctly including Thunderbird which I'll post about in that forum. FF is working fine.

I want to use all of my browser settings which include folders, Userchrome, etc. I copied the FF profile folder into the new Windows profile, but it doesn't see it when I use firefox.exe -P to open it or about:profiles to open it.

What am I doing wrong? Do I have to edit the name of the FF profile folder? I copied it into both correct locations, C:\Users\MY USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ and the location for Local.

Or do I have to overwrite one or more of the default FF profile folders in the new Windows profile?

[DanRaisch]

Since you are working with a new Windows profile you'll probably have a different Windows user ID. As that value is included in the Firefox file profiles.ini, Firefox is looking for the old Windows user ID and not finding it. You'll need to edit that file to point to the correct location. Look in C:\Users\WINUSERID\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox

[Wiggam72]

I tried editing the profiles.ini file by copying and pasting the info from my current user FF into it. It still doesn't see it. I don't see anywhere that I can edit the path.

This is what I copied into it.

I've edited Name= and Path=Profiles/ here for privacy reasons.

[Profile3]
Name=THE PROFILE NAME
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/ VARIOUS CHARACTERS.PROFILE NAME

BTW, I did not copy the Firefox folder. I only copied the current actual FF username folder and pasted it into the new Windows FF Profiles folder. Is that the correct thing to do?

[jscher2000]

BTW, I did not copy the Firefox folder. I only copied the current actual FF username folder and pasted it into the new Windows FF Profiles folder. Is that the correct thing to do?

I don't understand exactly what you copied. Let's say the path is:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

You could consider bringing over the entire old Firefox folder rather than working with individual profile folders. You can always create a new empty profile after that if you like.

Note: the extensions.json file used to use complete paths, which will break when moved anywhere outside the original path. You could try to repair those or just plan on your extensions not being able to use their saved data.

[Wiggam72]

jscher2000, I'll try to better explain what I copied. I opened the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\ Firefox folder, then opened the Profiles folder and copied all of the contents in it, and pasted it into the new Windows Firefox Profiles folder. So with that said, everyone now knows that doesn't work.

What you said to do works! I copied the old Firefox folder, deleted the new one, and replaced it with the old one. There were some files that it would not copy over. The message said it was 99%. I clicked the X to close the notification box. I've done a quick check and everything seems to be working. I'm using the new Windows profile right now. Even your awesome extension works. Switch To Previous Active Tab & Reload All Tabs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ent=search

I did the same thing to the Local folder as I did at the beginning of this post. Should I replace the Firefox folder there too? I don't use an MS account.

[jscher2000]

I did the same thing to the Local folder as I did at the beginning of this post. Should I replace the Firefox folder there too? I don't use an MS account.

I don't think it's needed, what's under AppData\Local is all temporary data which Firefox will rebuild if needed.