After auto-upgrade Firefox cannot open my profile and won't start.
I am running Firefox in a corporate environment. OS is Windows 7. Whenever an auto-upgrade is pushed out by Firefox, I get a message telling me that "firefox profile cannot be loaded it may be missing or inaccessible". Indeed, the latter is the case. My profile is no longer accessible to me. I am no longer its owner, according to Windows. Looking at the directory C:\Users\{my userid}\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\5a5finmq.default, I see that it's owner displays as "Unable to display current owner." and I am frozen out of Firefox. Examining this folder in Windows Explorer I cannot read, write, delete or do anything with what was once my profile.
Please don't tell me how to recreate my profile. This is a BUG and it needs to be fixed. I have a copy of an old profile and I am able to access it and transfer it into my profile directory and get up and running. BUT I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY TIME FIREFOX DECIDES TO UPGRADE ITSELF. Why is Firefox mangling the ownership of my profile and when will this bug be fixed. I have a lot of important information in my profile and it's a pain to recreate this from scratch every time this happens.
All Replies (3)
HI stevecoh1,
I am sorry to hear that the auto update to Firefox on your NTFS file system/corporate environment did not preserve the user profile. I recommend using firefox sync and using a device you have admin rights to preserve the user profile.
If you have access to a previous version of the profile it can be added to the profile folder that is missing in the update. Please reference these steps to restore the old profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_missing_profile Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles Fix "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional" error message
I am hoping that the sqllite file is not locked on the user directory, though this will vary on the policy of the AD of your corporate environment. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551436 If the file is locked and this is consistent this bug does need confirming.
I hope this helps, please post back let us know if it did or did not, we are happy to help.
OK, I do have admin rights to almost everything on my PC, but evidently not sufficient rights to change the ownership of or do anything with a directory whose ownership has been yanked from me. I do know how to restore an old profile and have done so, but that really doesn't solve the problem, it just works around it. Not sure why the firefox installer changes ownership of the profile, that is the bug. And the old profile IS preserved, but it is preserved in which a way that I have no rights to anything in it, not even read-only rights. I am assuming that it's all intact but with a different owner.
There is no *.sqllite file anywhere under C:\Users\{my userid}\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\ or C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
but this does not seem to impede the system in any noticeable way after I have reloaded my old profile.
Hi stevecoh1,
Ok, I would be more than happy to help file a bug in bugzilla, but we should make sure we have the exact steps to recreate this. If this also happens from the update from 25 to 26, the current version I would be happy to reproduce this. I will need
- What steps you took to install Firefox and the auto upgrade process.
- What steps do you take when you receive the error ""firefox profile cannot be loaded it may be missing or inaccessible"", Please make sure you have write access to this folder by right clicking on the folder and selecting Properties.
To prevent auto updates you can go to Tools> Options> Advanced> Update and set the preferences there.