Problem with profile manager on latest ESR

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dfoulkes
Posts: 22525
Joined: June 28th, 2008, 10:31 pm
Location: Mesquite, Nevada

Problem with profile manager on latest ESR

Post by dfoulkes »

My default profile is backed up and I have it protected while trying to figure this problem out.

I used the profile mgr. to remove a couple of UN-used profiles. But now when I start up Firefox either using my normal icon 'or' using the profile manager (pointing to my default profile) all I get is Firefox displayed as if I created a brand new empty profile. Just to see what would happen I created a new blank profile, copied everything from my loaded default profile into that new empty profile (using Windows file manager) .. then using the profile manager told it to use that new profile... you know... just to see what would happen... same thing happened...blank profile.

So, is there a area in here where the profile manager keeps data about profiles? ... I can't get past this blank profile. Also, when looking at my profiles in Apdata there are only those two profiles.

One more mystery. When this Firefox (blank profile) is started up I see that I have two Firefox's running in the task mgr. As far as I understand this ESR version just runs one copy...right?

Thanks for your help.
As you can see she's (The CAT) always alert and on the prowl for Meoware !!
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Problem with profile manager on latest ESR

Post by Brummelchen »

you probably missed the last option:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... -is-closed
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dfoulkes
Posts: 22525
Joined: June 28th, 2008, 10:31 pm
Location: Mesquite, Nevada

Re: Problem with profile manager on latest ESR (SORTED)

Post by dfoulkes »

If you are talking about closing Firefox ... or that last part about moving files... Firefox was closed when I did all the copy/paste from my default profile into my new one. I created the new one, closed it, opened up Windows file mgr. and 'under' the name for the new profile I deleted everything in there and then I went to my main default profile and clicked on its name (thus displaying all folders and files related to that profile) ... I did a CRTL+A for everything on the RHS (which highlights everything) ... did a copy of it all, went back to the new empty profile and pasted. Opened up Firefox using the profile mgr. pointing to that new profile and I still get what looks to be a completely new/blank profile. So what I then did was closed out Firefox, created another new profile, closed it, went into the file explorer again... did all that copy/paste stuff again, start up that profile via the profile manager... same thing... it still shows a new blank profile.

Also, still wondering about the double process in the Windows process explorer. I never had two running at the same time... especially when I start a fresh Firefox and two appear in that window. I have a feeling this has something to do with all of this... never had it before now.

... so, in reading stuff about problems with the profile.ini file I followed some instructions in our doc. section about either deleting or renaming the profile.ini file... I renamed it, then start up the profile manager and it had zero profiles now in its window. I created another new profile (closed Firefox) and did the same copy/paste routine as before... all that data into that new profile. Using the profile manager ... which now only displays that single/new profile, I start up Firefox and still got the same empty/new profile.

Note that I even rebooted my PC just to make sure that something was left over in some cache area that might be causing this issue.

Update

First... I've used the profile manager many times over the year... just saying... I think that I know what I'm doing... anyway...

First thing that I did this AM was to perform my every Friday 'normal' backups.

Then I proceeded to use the Profile mgr. to clean out 2 of my old/unused profiles that had been used for testing stuff and other needs... in both cases I deleted the profiles and the manager asked me if I wanted to clear out data file... and yes, I did. The leftover result was that I had my default profile (my loaded one) and another one that I use that doesn't have so many extensions. BUT unknown to me was that the profile manager removed all data from all profiles ... even those two that I did not touch.... and assuming that my main profile was a good one that is the one I used to copy/paste in my new profiles...the ones that I was using to fix this problem... problem was that when I had started up Firefox it created all the basic files (empty) and when I looked at the files and folders in my main profile I thought that everything was there... but it was not. It looked ok but the profile mgr. had cleared them out. I'm sure glad that I did my morning backup before I started all of this..

Anyway, thanks Brummelchen for your help on this.
As you can see she's (The CAT) always alert and on the prowl for Meoware !!
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dickvl
Posts: 54145
Joined: July 18th, 2005, 3:25 am

Re: Problem with profile manager on latest ESR

Post by dickvl »

You can use the about:profiles page to quickly go to a specific profile.
You need the Root location (AppData\Roaming\) for the main profile.
Note that the profile will be initialized when Firefox detects that the profile was used by a different Firefox version (compatibility.ini).
Brummelchen
Posts: 4480
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:51 am

Re: Problem with profile manager on latest ESR

Post by Brummelchen »

is this about usable on 52esr?

@dfoulkes
read again your question. to wrote about two instances, there should be none when copying files. firefox creates temporary files for the important sqlite files and merge them on shutdown. thus you can replace places etc and firefox wont notice it.
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