Firefox froze and then forced change of default profile....

Onslaught35 · Post by **Onslaught35** » December 17th, 2004, 5:39 am

Firefox froze while I was waiting for a page to load so I exited out of it. When I clicked on the shortcut to launch it again, a little box popped up that said Firefox used profiles to maintain settings and preferences and gave me options to choose an existing one, delete an existing one, or create a new one. When I tried to click on the only one available showing in the box (default), it wouldn't let me and said "already in use" or something similar. So I hit create new and it launched firefox, but with all my bookmarks and toolbar links gone.

How can I transfer my old bookmarks over, or better yet have it launch my old profile settings instead of this new one? Thank you.

mcm_ham · Post by **mcm_ham** » December 17th, 2004, 6:36 am

Well firstly to make things easier create the firefox shortcut from this site.

http://gemal.dk/blog/2004/11/05/firefox ... shortcuts/

Now make sure Firefox is closed by hitting ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manger and killing the firefox.exe process if it is there. Now right click on your new desktop shortcut and choose profile manager again. Delete the new one you created and start firefox with the one called default.

What happened is that firefox was still running in the background and had a lock on your old profile. When you start firefox in this situation you get confronted with the profile manager, the correct action is to kill the firefox process as outlined above or by restarting your computer.

dswogger · Post by **dswogger** » December 17th, 2004, 9:02 am

mcm_ham wrote:Well firstly to make things easier create the firefox shortcut from this site.

http://gemal.dk/blog/2004/11/05/firefox ... shortcuts/

Now make sure Firefox is closed by hitting ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manger and killing the firefox.exe process if it is there. Now right click on your new desktop shortcut and choose profile manager again. Delete the new one you created and start firefox with the one called default.

What happened is that firefox was still running in the background and had a lock on your old profile. When you start firefox in this situation you get confronted with the profile manager, the correct action is to kill the firefox process as outlined above or by restarting your computer.

Norton tells me that those vbs files are "malicious" and recommends they be stopped?

mcm_ham · Post by **mcm_ham** » December 17th, 2004, 3:38 pm

vbs are script files and can be used to perform different tasks, in this case they create registry entries. Just like a program that has been written to do harm so can vbs do harm. Those scripts are perfectly safe and when NAV's script blocker comes up again select allow entire script once. Alternatively you can go to start menu and run and type "firefox -profilemanger" to bring up the profile manager (it will only come up if firefox is not running). See:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

VectorThunder · Post by **VectorThunder** » December 17th, 2004, 3:39 pm

Onslaught35 wrote:Firefox froze while I was waiting for a page to load so I exited out of it. When I clicked on the shortcut to launch it again, a little box popped up that said Firefox used profiles to maintain settings and preferences and gave me options to choose an existing one, delete an existing one, or create a new one. When I tried to click on the only one available showing in the box (default), it wouldn't let me and said "already in use" or something similar. So I hit create new and it launched firefox, but with all my bookmarks and toolbar links gone.

How can I transfer my old bookmarks over, or better yet have it launch my old profile settings instead of this new one? Thank you.

Open Profile Manager and select the original default profile. Delete the new one you created.
http://kb-upgrade.mozillazine.org/Thund ... le_Manager

Guest · Post by **Guest** » December 17th, 2004, 3:58 pm

mcm_ham wrote:vbs are script files and can be used to perform different tasks, in this case they create registry entries. Just like a program that has been written to do harm so can vbs do harm. Those scripts are perfectly safe and when NAV's script blocker comes up again select allow entire script once. Alternatively you can go to start menu and run and type "firefox -profilemanger" to bring up the profile manager (it will only come up if firefox is not running). See:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

Thank you so much.

Now, if one wishes to remove this, what would the procedure be?

mcm_ham · Post by **mcm_ham** » December 17th, 2004, 9:50 pm

Glad to know you are up and running again. I was suggesting to create the shortcut because it makes getting access to things like the Profile Manger much easier in the future. It will be created for all users and if anyone doesn't want the icon they can right click and select delete which will hide the shortcut. To completely remove it off the computer I did have an undo script posted on my website but it appears to be down. Just copy and paste the code below into notepad and save the file with the vbs extension.

Code: Select all

On Error Resume Next
Set WShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'Delete Firefox NameSpace
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\DefaultIcon"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\Open\command\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\Open\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\open (safe-mode)\command\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\open (safe-mode)\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\options\command\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\options\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\profilemanager\command\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\profilemanager\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\ShellFolder"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\Shell\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\ShellFolder\"
WShell.RegDelete "HKCR\CLSID\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\"

'Delete Firefox NameSpace Icon
WShell.RegDelete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{EC8030F7-C20A-464F-9B0E-13A3A9E97384}\"

Firefox froze and then forced change of default profile....

Firefox froze and then forced change of default profile....

Re: Firefox froze and then forced change of default profile.