Get the new PortableApps.com Platform 10.0: Gorgeous themes, a full portable app store and advanced functionality
Announcing the World's Best Flash Drive: The PortableApps.com Companion

Cannot uninstall add-ons in FxP 3.6.3

patrickmaddog - September 1, 2010 - 7:48pm

I was doing some testing to find out if some of my favorite add-ons would work portably -- and most did -- but when I decided to uninstall them, restarting the browser caused the add-ons window to pop up saying that I had just installed them, and they remain in the add-ons list.

Do you know what could be causing this? Is there a way to manually remove the add-ons by deleting them from the drive? The add-ons that I am trying to uninstall are:

-Add To Search Bar
-Beef TACO
-Ghostery
-SkipScreen

The add-ons I am going to keep are:

-1-Click Youtube Video Downloader
-AdBlock Plus
-Combine Buttons
-Diigo Bookmarks and Web Annotations
-DownThemALL!
-DownThemALL! AntiContainer
-Fission
-Greasemonkey
-Stylish
-Locationbar2
-Smoothwheel
-Speed Dial
-Tab Utilities
-TinEye Reverse Image Search
-TorButton

Thanks for any help!


( categories: )

Try again

That is strange behaviour. I've never seen anything like that happen. It's possible in doing some add-on updates something happened. I'd suggest that you try again. It may work properly the next time.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

I had already tried multiple

I had already tried multiple times before coming here, and no luck. I forgot to mention that I was able to successfully uninstall ScribeFire Next, but after that restart was when the problems occurred. I don't believe that had much to do with it though, because I have always had the strange issue of the add-ons window appearing at startup and saying '# new add-ons installed', usually highlighting the newest ones in the list. I thought this was just something normal that happens when moving from computer to computer, but apparently not.

I thought that perhaps there was a problem deleting the files from my drive, but I have full administrative rights on the computers in question, and there were no file access restrictions in effect, so I don't know why this would be.

And thanks for the speedy reply.

Safe mode

Try starting it in safe mode and uninstalling it from safe mode. It may help, so it's worth a try, I reckon.

Open Command Prompt. cd X:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable (meaning your install path). Then FirefoxPortable.exe -safe-mode and you can try uninstalling the add-ons again.

It's probable that there's some profile corruption (likely to be only very minor, I'd say); just in case you're not aware of it, it's a good idea to be careful about how you use Firefox - not pulling out the USB disk without safely removing it, etc.

So first of all try safe mode, then after that you can try removing the extension manually.

See http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/cannot+uninstall+an+add-on for more information on the process. Your profile is in Data\profile in the directory you installed Firefox Portable to.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

Thanks!

Safe mode worked perfectly. I had thought of it, but was unsure of how to use it for Fx Portable and then forgot to ask.

As for profile corruption, I am a stickler for safely removing hardware, and I would NEVER pull the plug without properly ejecting the drive, so I doubt that is the cause. Should I continue to be concerned about these events?

Don't worry

Don't worry about it then. Probably a freak occurrence, possibly related to one of the extensions.

If you want to check to make sure you could try checking the disk for errors - in the Options menu in the Platform.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1