Firefox profile cannot be loaded

[dash1730]

I was having difficulty with FireFox (v.17.0.1) booting up under my Windows login, but no problem with my wife's login. So I decided to reinstall FF. I uninstalled FF under Windows Control Panel, deleted FF's folder in Programs (86), and deleted all references to it in Regedit. Then I reinstalled it

Now I get the error message: "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible"

When I go to the profiles folder * find 4 files in it. Now before I deleted FF, I had moved the 4 files from this folder to another one as I was trying to diagnose the problem. Once done with that part of the diagnosis I moved them back. It was at this point that I started getting the error message and not being able to login to FF. When I checked my wife's windows login, she was able to boot up and use FF without any problem.

So how do I get FF to recognize my profile?

[smsmith]

There should be way more than 4 files in your profile folder. Where do you think your profile folder is? Please list the path. You can obfuscate your windows login in the file path.

This article describes the location and contents of the profile folder:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

You can try creating a new user profile and see if you can get Firefox to open:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager

[dash1730]

When I say I have 4 profile folders I mean just that, rather than 4 files within my profile folder.

With that said, I read the two links you gave me and tried to restore my profile under a NEW WINDOWS LOGIN, to see what would happen. So I went to
Show all Bookmarks > Import and Backkup > Restore
and selected a backup to restore. It made no difference what backup I selected, I clicked "Yes" to the message "This will replace all of your current bookmarks with the backup. Are you sure? But absolutely nothing happened. And closing and restarting Firefox was no help.

Any suggestions?

[dash1730]

Can anyone offer a suggestion? I really would like to get FireFox going again.
Thanks,

[malliz]

Ok Backup the profiles
Uninstall firefox completely including the old profiles.
Re-install Firefox and see if it works. If it does you can always transfer files from your old profiles across later.