Hello all,
I'm sorry for adding just another post on this topic but meeting 'Profile Missing' error message is somehow becoming an issue.
1st of all I manually upgraded to current Firefox Portable v105.0.2 over previous v105.0.1 that I probably only manually upgraded over previous v104.0.2 that if I recall well still gave me infamous error even if directly manually upgraded over previous v103.0.2:
'[ Profile Missing ]
/ ! \ Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.'
Well in reality when I 1st started current Firefox Portable v105.0.2 everything seemed almost normal, I mean 3 Firefox windows were opened just like recoverying latest 3 Firefox Portable windows still opened while for some reason I'm not recalling I had to force closing one of them.
Problem is that all 3 windows immediately went to 'Not Responding' state and never recovered from there so after some time I decided that awaiting more time for them to possibly recover proper status back to 'Running' was just a waste of time and decided to close one of those FFP windows.
Problem is that now, whenever I try again to run Firefox Portable (via its launcher) I always only see same error :
'[ Profile Missing ]
/ ! \ Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.'
Since I'm quite far to be a Firefox Portable expert, now my assumption is that Firefox Portable v105.0.2 must have somehow corrupted a local temporary cache file (or database file) that it uses when starting and trying to recover all old sessions previously still in use before it was closed.
But since I also tried to run Firefox Portable while also specifying officially documented '-safe-mode' option so after manually creating another shortcut ending with '..\FirefoxPortable.exe -safe-mode', but even that still changes nothing in Firefox Portable 'Profile Missing' error, my question is could it be possible to reset that local temporary cache file (or database file) that Firefox Portable use when starting to recover all his old sessions ?
Thanks in advance for any reply and obviously any correction I'll receive to what I probably wrongly assumed above.
Best Regards
Rob
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It sounds like the crash corrupted your profile. The best option is to restore from backup. This is not a portable specific issue but rather a corruption issue on the drive that affects the profile itself and Firefox's ability to recover from it. I don't have experience recovering from this. Searching for general Mozilla resources to assist would be helpful. Any references to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default-release would apply to FirefoxPortable\Data\profile in the portable version.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well Firefox didn't really crashed, since it went to 'Not responding' state I'd say that was a hang, and I guess that it would be quite difficult to really check in which profile area there might have been any corruption. Unluckily I've always used default profile so I guess that I'll have no way to restore anything unless simply trying to downgrade to v105.0.1 or even trying to manually force a migration to next Firefox Portable ESR 115.0.3esr might be valid troubleshooting options. Is anyone aware of which parts of the profile should I eventually try to keep anyway if also trying to maintain the past session recovery features ?
A very nice recovery option for Firefox would even be if I might be able to combine -safe-mode option also with FF Troubleshoot Mode, something that I still haven't tried experimenting yet, but will just be my next troubleshooting step, just before trying to downgrade back to 115.0.1 or manually force upgrading to Firefox Portable ESR 115.0.3esr when ready.
I'll keep you all updated on my next test results once completed.
Best Regards
Rob
OK, then. My FF Portable 105.0.2 now just got back in action. As I said I just tried to combine entering FF Troubleshoot Mode (it's enough to keep [Shift] pressed while starting Firefox Portable) with manual -safe-mode startup option I added manually into a new shortcut copied from default one created during setup, to finally see FF Troubleshoot Mode window appear (for reference, pls just see this page Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode ). The only difference with FF is that only [ Open ] button is shown (so just don't expect to see [ Refresh Firefox ] button too), but it was enough in my case to let FFP start and so, then, after exiting FFP I was also able to restart FirefoxPortable normally using its own default shortcut.
Best Regards
Rob
OK, then. I'm posting this additional "quick" update because, very differently from my past expectations of a definitive permanent resolution, after same time I faced a very similar issue again. No real idea what happened but after a couple of times that my FF Portable 105.0.2 worked fine and normally as expected, it began to start with no more Profile Missing error but only to switch all its 3 past opened windows correctly resumed to Not Responding status. Once again I tried several times to run FF using the magic command line option '... -safe-mode' to try fixing issue but this time this had no effect. I probably even tried to reinstall FF Portable 105.0.2 onto itself but once again with changes in the Not Responding status of the 3 resumed opened windows that still continued to begin about 5 or 6 seconds after the 3 windows reopened as expected. I must admit I was really frustrated about this and so I even began to think I could no more use FF as 2nd browser in case of real need. Even today while for a different talking on the phone with another local HelpDesk requesting me to do some tests with another browser (MS Edge is my main one) and proposed FF I had to refuse that idea, but after I could solve my issue anyway still sticking to MS Edge I continued to think to tests even a little bit more with FF. After I started, once again with the magic command line option '... -safe-mode' I also quite casually figured out that if while the 3 resumed windows were 'Not Responding', by activating FF own Quick Shortcut menu from Application Bar I could magically succeed in starting a new FF window that indeed worked fine and showed no 'Not Responding' effects even after some minutes I had left it opened. This really made me think that FF main engine was indeed working fine as it had to do, and that there was probably something else involved in causing the 'Not Responding' effects. After that I even tried to manually kill all FF sub-processes of main FF one (from Sysinternals Process Explorer) to see if at least one of them was causing same effect, but nothing happened and so I at the end I simply decided to close one of the 3 windows from GUI side. But that also made me think a little more if there might have been a test I still hadn't tried yet, and so after I figured out which one it was I decided to force executing same shortcut I use for 'FirefoxPortable Safe Mode' in 'Run as Administrator' mode. And voilà, this time after the 3 windows resumed correctly, all them continued to run as normally as they should have always had to do since beginning, so after I took the chance and definitely lowered the number of opened windows (I found out there were indeed 4, but 2 were probably just sharing same window position. After end of that test I decided to ran FF again normally and after its single window resumed and stayed running in Normal status I figured out that everything reverted back to normal and that once again I managed to (hopefully) definitely fix FF. As a possible explanation of what had happened before, I don't know really FF so well in depth, so for now I'm only assuming that some of FF temporary data structures it uses when resuming own windows might have had only partially written correctly in the past while closing FF, and that at least so finally having a High Integrity level for FF main process was enough to ensure they could finally be fully overwritten and saved correctly when FF finally started its Safe Mode while in 'Run as Administrator'. Anyway for now I prefer not to investigate further, so let's just hope in won't happen again. This time after I last closed FF I also took a better look at how really slow and indeed delayed were all FF sub-processes before they were effectively closed so next time I run FF I'll even make sure to also delay suspending my laptop for a couple of minutes more to hopefully also ensure FF fully closed itself in most proper way.
P.S. I also hope sharing all this might possibly help others too if facing similar effects.
Best Regards
Rob