I last used my Firefox Portable (2.0) yesterday and it automatically downloaded an update then asked me if I wanted to update it then. I said no and it told me it would do this on the next operation.
I closed the program later and removed the drive. This afternoon I inserted the drive into a computer (the same one I was using previously) and Firefox came up with a completely new install. ALL of my settings, extensions, and bookmarks had been erased without a trace. No, I hadn't backed them up because I'd never had any need to do this previously.
Is there anything that I can do? If it is impossible to recover anything can I at least prevent this from happening in the future? Or is the only way to do that to back up everything in a completely separate location before anything runs automatically? Thanks.
~Matt
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
Most likely, they're still there. Check out:
FirefoxPortable\Data\profile
and back that folder up. That should be your profile.
Now, reboot your PC to ensure any existing Firefox processes close. Then restart FFP and see what comes up. You may not even need to reboot if you're familiar with task manager.
Sometimes when Firefox updates it respawns itself but doesn't use the portable profile, instead using the local one or creating a default one if there isn't one there already. Just ensuring that all Firefox processes close and then restarting FFP takes care of your profile missing.
You'll see a profile in:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla... etc
If you don't use FF or other Mozilla apps on that PC, you can delete it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I checked that folder right after I started up Firefox and noticed that things were missing. There were no files in the extensions folder, even though I have several extensions installed.
The file bookmarks is empty of everything but the default bookmarks installed with a new install of Firefox. The folder bookmark backups contains a backup file from today that contains the exact same information as the bookmarks folder.
I tried restarting the computer (just to make sure, even though I thought I'd gotten every instance of Firefox with Task Manager), but nothing comes up when I open that instance of Firefox. Right now I'm using my other USB drive. I created the other profile from this drive a few weeks ago, so I haven't lost everything--just everything recent.
~Matt
"A room without books is as a body without a soul." - Cicero
"A room without books is as a body without a soul." - Cicero
In that case, the likely culprit is corruption on the drive. Firefox's update process doesn't mess with the data directory (at least it never has before). I'd suggest a drive format and keep an eye on it to be sure it's ok.
And please backup. PortableApps.com Backup is dead easy to use and built right into the Suite/Menu.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Okay, thanks.
Yeah, I know it is easy to use. I thought that I'd done that before--but I need to do it regularly. You'd think that after I'd been burned by bad hard drives a couple of times I'd learn to back files up.
~Matt
"A room without books is as a body without a soul." - Cicero
"A room without books is as a body without a soul." - Cicero