At this point, I am too livid to be civil, so deal with it !
The following is for the Portable Firefox developers only:
What in the hell are you people thinking? I had Portable Firefox 2.0.0.12 installed on my pen drive and a virus overwrote the firefox.exe file. So, I reinstalled it to get Firefox.exe back so I could start it - it said something about upgrading, so I figured everything was O.K. Upgrades do not usually wipe out previous settings and all data. However, everything is NOT O.K. I had hundreds of bookmarks and perhaps two dozen extensions, as well as all my - hundreds of - passwords ! ! ! and your stupidly written application overwrote all of them, causing me to lose everything from basic settings to all the way through the program. Who would be so incredibly STUPID as to write the program so that it would do that on an upgrade. You people, apparently, and then you didn't have enough sense to put a warning in the installation wizard that if one were to continue, all settings, bookmarks, extensions, everything would be lost.
I can not possibly comprehend how you people could be so utterly stupid as to set the program up like that, or at least, to not have a warning.
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID ! ! ! ! !
Please excuse my lack of civility, but this is apparently a major and incomprehensively stupid blunder on your part. FIX IT NOW ! ! ! !
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Every instance of the FFP download and install, as well as the new versions of ffp that you download from here does not touch your bookmarks or passwords. You can reinstall any ffp version over any other ffp version and it keeps the settings. I've even installed an older version on a later version and it kept my settings and preferences and bookmarks.
Seems like since you got your virus, you lost your ffp program. That should be your point of contention.
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#upgrading
It's been discussed pretty often that upgrades by individual programs can and might break up the portability issues of the program, so the recommendation is to do it with a new paf from here.
The other thread that you posted this first to actually discussed the problem and solution, from way back in December 2007 https://portableapps.com/node/10338
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
unfortunately, you have ranted on at exactly the wrong people.
First of all, you need to understand that you did not update Firefox Portable.
What you did was install an out of date copy of Firefox Portable, which then ran the automated updater from the native Firefox distribution.
The Firefox Portable FAQ ( https://portableapps.com/forums/support/firefox_portable/faq ) question number one states that you should definitely not do this.
Also, there is nothing that the developers here can do to fix this problem. The bug is in the Firefox updater, not in the launcher that PortableApps.com added to it, and we are prevented by law (by the licence that John T. Haller negotiated with Mozilla) from making any changes to the update system within the standard Firefox application distributed from here.
So, all that can be done by the people you have ranted at, is to post a warning in the FAQ, which apparently you didn't read, or log the bug with Mozilla - if you use the search feature here, you will find many threads discussing this issue, and links to the bugzilla tracking system where it has indeed been reported.
Of course, shouting at the people here has probably also annoyed and upset some of the people who could probably have helped you, had you asked more politely.
The good news is that it is very likely that you data hasn't been destroyed, unless you have deleted it. Usually in this case, what has happened is that the update is now trying to access a profile on the c: drive instead of the portable one. You should be able to get the data back.
First of all, make a backup of your entire current \PortableApps\FirefoxPortable folder, preferably by moving it out of the way to a different name.
Download the current version of FFP from here (2.0.0.14) and perform a fresh clean installation of it.
All of your bookmarks, password, extensions etc. should be in \PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\Profile and you should be able to copy them all from the backup that you took back into the new folder.
Best of luck with it, and if you hit any problems, feel free to ask, but please, in future, before shouting at and offending people who have freely donated their time and effort to creating an application that you use, please check your facts to make sure that they are in fact the ones responsible, and that it isn't something that you have done wrong, or something beyond their control that has caused it, or you run the risk of making yourself look a little silly.
done, you said that a lot more nicely than I was going to
I ditto that. I think I would have held back saying anything on this one.
it took some editing in places
I had about another couple paragraphs of uhm ... "content" that I had to edit out again after I first posted.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
cant we start a petition to have mozilla fix that update issue for sake of proper functionality of PortableApps?
Would it be illegal also for the portableapps menu to turn autoupdate off? (If that's what causing the issues?) ((and another good reason to have paupdater in the future!)
1. The Portable version of Firefox comes with the "updates" option on by default - John says it is a legal thing, he can't change the base program. I've already asked!
But for the portable version, this is not the way to update; instead, you need to update by installing from the installers here.
To disable this automatic update, go to Tools>Options>Advanced>Updates and UNCHECK Firefox. Also, choose the option box "Ask me what I want to do"
You have to do this Every Time you install a newer portable version!
2. I'm thinking that the loss of the passwords is one of the biggest sore points. I feel your pain, I've lost saved passwords in the past (through viruses, crashes, etc). It's best to have a backup of your passwords list somewhere else.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Your entire Firefox Portable once you get everything setup the way you want it and keep backing it up, especially if you save more passwords, add extensions, or other personal data. Having only one copy, especially on a flash drive, is going to be frustrating if the files become corrupt and the one of the many advantages of portability is that you can make as many copies as you want of the program folder.