Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

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conceptualclarity1
Posts: 22
Joined: March 21st, 2017, 6:34 pm

Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by conceptualclarity1 »

Image

On the Profile Manager, when I hover over "default", it shows a path for a synthetic empty profile unrelated to my existing profiles.

The 7/30/2017 date would correspond to when this glitch was first encountered. The profiles shown above are still full of the files and folders that should be within them.

I have consulted articles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ho ... accessible, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_cannot_be_loaded, and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file. I did not move, rename, or delete my profile folder. Why this glitch appeared is quite a mystery.

I tried resolving this by editing the profiles.ini file to get rid of the synthetic empty profile and replace it with two of the profiles shown above. I saved it to the proper folder. But when I reopened Profile Manager it did not show those two profiles but instead once again the synthetic empty profile.

I have data that I value on multiple shown profiles, and I want to recover it all. Your help will be appreciated.
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Reflective
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by Reflective »

Type (or copy/paste from here): about:profiles in the location bar and hit Enter.

Then check to make sure that each profile has the same name in both the Root directory and the Local directory and that both match the description in your screenshot for each of them.
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therube
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by therube »

(Backup. Or at least make sure you don't clobber your existing Profiles.)

Recovering a missing profile

Verify that you do not have any hung firefox.exe processes.

Maybe create a new Profile, call it simply, "TEST".
Ensure that that shows up in Profile Manager.
Make sure it opens, & runs.
Make sure that profiles.ini is updated as expected.
Last edited by therube on September 18th, 2017, 7:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Fire 750, bring back 250.
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

What is your reference/example for the profiles.ini file contents?



Do you have an entry like this in your .ini file?

[Profile1] << or whatever number may apply
Name=m6q1bty9.troubleshooting
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/m6q1bty9.troubleshooting

and have contents in the folder Profiles/m6q1bty9.troubleshooting
I often take a long windy road to my destination. Upon arrival, I wonder how I missed the shortcut.
conceptualclarity1
Posts: 22
Joined: March 21st, 2017, 6:34 pm

Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by conceptualclarity1 »

BruceAWittmeier wrote:What is your reference/example for the profiles.ini file contents?
The contents are:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=0

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/vtrpffj2.default
Default=1
That is the synthetic profile I refer to that has been imposed on me.

BruceAWittmeier wrote:Do you have an entry like this in your .ini file?

[Profile1] << or whatever number may apply
Name=m6q1bty9.troubleshooting
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/m6q1bty9.troubleshooting

and have contents in the folder Profiles/m6q1bty9.troubleshooting
No. I tried to substitute this in the profiles.ini file:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/zvxmcoez.videos

[Profile1]
Name=onmn81rg.original
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original
I may have done some of that wrong. At any rate the profiles.ini was changed back on me.

Now I have discovered something I had forgotten that could be why this is happening. This imposed vtrpffj2.default profile is in [username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles whereas heretofore my profiles have been in [username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Does anybody have any insight to shed on this location change?
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DanRaisch
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by DanRaisch »

The default location for a Firefox profile under Win XP would be C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>. That default can be overridden by the user upon installation but there is no way for us to know if that is what caused the vtrpffj2.default profile to be located under \Local Settings, which is an unusual place to find it.
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therube
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by therube »

Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

What do you see if you enter on the windows start/command dialog:

If you exit Firefox then enter:
Firefox -p and hit <enter>

Is the profile there?

If it is a matter of saving your data you could create a temp profile then copy the contents to that profile and rename it in the above dialog/window.
I often take a long windy road to my destination. Upon arrival, I wonder how I missed the shortcut.
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therube
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by therube »

Path=C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original
So did you actually copy onmn81rg.default to C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original?

On XP, your profiles.ini is at, C:\Documents and Settings\{...name...}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini.
(And AFAIK it cannot be anywhere else.)
whereas heretofore my profiles have been in [username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
Actual Profiles can be (just about) anywhere.
All that needs to happen is that they are pointed to correctly in profiles.ini.

So your profiles.ini would have had to have something like:
[Profile1]
Name=onmn81rg.original
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\[username]\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original
Fire 750, bring back 250.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.19) Gecko/20110420 SeaMonkey/2.0.14 Pinball CopyURL+ FetchTextURL FlashGot NoScript
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by Brummelchen »

better:
[Profile1]
Name=onmn81rg.original
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles\onmn81rg.original
%APPDATA%\Mozilla is valid for all windows > START > Execute

the red marked has to be same and correspond to your folders.
the number(blue) starts with 0 and increases +1 each profile
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dickvl
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Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by dickvl »

You can use the Profile Manager to create new profiles and use "Choose Folder" to register each profile that doesn't show in the Profile Manager.
You can remove no longer existing profiles and only keep profiles that are actually present.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager

Note that you should never use "Choose Folder" to specify a folder that already contains files that do not belong to Firefox (i.e. only use "Choose Folder" to recover an orphaned profile that isn't listed in the Profile Manager).
conceptualclarity1
Posts: 22
Joined: March 21st, 2017, 6:34 pm

Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by conceptualclarity1 »

Thanks to all of you gentlemen.
What do you see if you enter on the windows start/command dialog:

If you exit Firefox then enter:
Firefox -p and hit <enter>

Is the profile there?
The desired profiles are not there, just this new imposed one.

So did you actually copy onmn81rg.default to C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original?
I simply renamed it. I wanted to avoid confusion, since "videos" was the default and is now the (intended) default. I checked, and all the data is still in that onmn81rg folder.

I deleted vtrpffj2.default, and MastterSeeker shows it absent from my computer. However the Profile Manager envisions it as default profile when I hover. Difference is this time it envisions it at [username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles rather than at [username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles where I deleted it.

[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox adjacent to where the imposed profile was contains three .xml files, "active-update-1.xml" modified 1/24/2017, "active-update.xml" modified 5/20/2017, and "updates.xml" modified 5/20/2017; and a folder called "updates". "updates" contains a couple of log files, "backup-update.log" modified 5/19/2017 and "last-update.log" modified 5/20/2017.
Verify that you do not have any hung firefox.exe processes.
I have none.
Type (or copy/paste from here): about:profiles in the location bar and hit Enter.

Then check to make sure that each profile has the same name in both the Root directory and the Local directory and that both match the description in your screenshot for each of them.

I believe this is about working within the open Firefox browser, right? I haven't been opening it if my only choice was the undesired new empty profile.
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by Brummelchen »

[username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Mozilla
if you dont see any extension data by names you can delete it
%localappdata%\mozilla

at least - dont think to complicated - make it as knowledgebase told you and the example from above:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=<insert_name>
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/<insert_name>

[Profile1]
...
firefox needs to be closed.

profiles.ini is a simple text file -> notepad.
Last edited by Brummelchen on September 19th, 2017, 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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the-edmeister
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by the-edmeister »

conceptualclarity1 wrote: ...

No. I tried to substitute this in the profiles.ini file:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/zvxmcoez.videos

[Profile1]
Name=onmn81rg.original
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original
I may have done some of that wrong. At any rate the profiles.ini was changed back on me.

Now I have discovered something I had forgotten that could be why this is happening. This imposed vtrpffj2.default profile is in [username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles whereas heretofore my profiles have been in [username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. Does anybody have any insight to shed on this location change?
What was is it "changed back" to? More than likely the Profile Manager didn't "recognize" your edits, as they were improper - so it guessed as to the correct "path".

Is that Profile located at C:\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\onmn81rg.original? Where the Profile Manager would expect it to be!
Simply editing the profiles.ini file to point the PM to where you want that Profile to be isn't enough; Firefox won't create a new folder there - a command line process would create a new Profile where you want it.

A new "remote" Profile should be instituted or effected via the Profile Manager > New Profile -> Choose Folder .

Another point that I have a about is, are you using WinXP (as all of your postings appear to be from using both SeaMonkey and Maxthon); and if so which version of Firefox are you using?
Firefox 52 ESR is the last version of Firefox that is compatible with WinXP ... unless those two browser were running in WinXP Compatibility Mode.
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BruceAWittmeier
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Re: Firefox not recognizing any of my profiles

Post by BruceAWittmeier »

What I would do is like above.

Create a new profile
Run FX once to initiate the profile
Close FX
Remove/delete the files under the profile directory leaving the profile directory name
Copy the old profile contents (the one you want/need) to that directory using the newly created profile name
Run FX again with that profile name selected
Close FX
Execute Firefox -p and rename the profile in the profile dialog box to the old name as your original post
I often take a long windy road to my destination. Upon arrival, I wonder how I missed the shortcut.
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