Page 1 of Of all the things they tell you to back up...

They never mention Firefox Profiles.

I was busy working on a Word doc, Firefox open in the background, when all of a sudden it crashed. No big deal I thought. I started it, it crashed again, and it thereafter continued to do that. Open for a minute before crashing each time. Something had patently buggered up.

So in my minute long bursts of productiveness, I went looking for help, and Mozilla suggested a clean install of FF, telling me that the program will be refreshed, while keeping my profile. I did the clean install, no difference. Problem is patently in my profile. Last time something like this happened, I simply copied out the profile, reset Firefox, and copied the old profile back to the new clean one. That didn't work either. So it's trial and error to see which file was causing the crashes.

Turns out after three hours of lost time, that it's my prefs.js file, which is me buggered I thought. Without it, Firefox doesn't know how I like it, it will lose all the preferences for my add-ons and plug-ins, and I'll be left trying to get it back to the way I most like it, probably for the  rest of my life. Ever since Mozilla started screwing up their browser, removing functionality, I've stuck with Firefox 28, with a wodge load of add-ons to get the text displaying right, get the tool bars looking like old FF and so on.

Luckily, I remembered screwing around with Portable FF 29 to see if it was worth upgrading to that before deciding not, and had copied my profile to that rather than waste ages setting that up, and I was able to rescue a prefs.js file from that, albeit a year older. Anyway Firefox isn't crashing anymore, and I want my Saturday back, you bastard browser.

Moral of story... back up your FF profile regularly

c:users\blah\appdata\local\mozilla\firefox\profiles

c:users\blah\appdata\roaming\mozilla\firefox\profiles

It'll be somewhere like that, if you just do the standard install. the one in roaming is the important one.

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

Wow, that's an old version. I guess security flaws and rendering bugs aren't very important to you. :o

Do you not use Firefox Sync to remember your preferences/cookies/etc? Also I presume you couldn't create a new profile and then just copy the prefs file over?

What sort of things do you use that Mozilla removed out of interest?

Editor
DVD REVIEWER
MYREVIEWER.COM

My Flickr Photostream

It's the general look of the UI for one. Even with 28, I use this classic theme add-on to get it looking like old Firefox, giving me the customisation I want over the toolbar. That add on doesn't work with 29 onwards.

But the biggest thing is that around 25, they changed the renderer to take its cue from the DPI settings of the operating system. It doesn't work properly on my laptop. I have the DPI at 125%, and that screws up the font with Firefox. Everything becomes blurry and oversized. I use Theme Font and Size Changer, as well as some about:config settings to get it looking normal, but Mozilla have never bothered fixing that 'bug', no matter how many people have complained about it. While Chrome handles native DPI settings just fine.

With each new version, I've read the notes, and it looks like Firefox keep reducing functionality and user configurability, so I just stuck to 28. Can't be asked to go through the headache of trying to get it to look right each time.

I'll keep using it till it stops rendering the sites I visit properly, stops me from surfing properly, and then I'll either switch to Chrome, or something like the Pale Moon Firefox spin-off.

EDIT: Tried Sync... Synced up my preferences etc, then Firefox demanded that I update to the latest version, despite my preference that it not do so. And it was the same everytime I started FF, UAC telling me to upgrade the browser. Unsynced Firefox, deleted upgrade files from my profile...

===========================
Jitendar Canth

Quote:
"I thought what I`d do was, I`d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

Site Reviewer at DVD Reviewer & MyReviewer

Carving out a niche with a pneumatic drill at Anime @ MyReviewer.com

This item was edited on Sunday, 26th April 2015, 11:49

similarly the important thunderbird stuff is in

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird

I guess that's the advantage of using a proper backup tool, it will backup your entire c drive, which is where most ppl keep their personal files, ready to restore.

I've got a batch file while I run to zip up those easy to forget directories, I remember many years ago, doing a fresh install, restrored my files, only to find I hadn't backuped up my actual outlook express email files :(

Unless you knowingly store any files outside of these directories, or have more than one drive, all you really need to back up are:

C:\Users\*
C:\ProgramData\*

Assuming you have all the install discs, drivers and any fonts you installed somewhere. :)

Editor
DVD REVIEWER
MYREVIEWER.COM

My Flickr Photostream