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Firefox unportabilified itself?

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Black Platypus
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Firefox unportabilified itself?

FF Version: 56.0.2
PortableApps Launcher: 2.0.6.0
On Windows 10 x64

I wanted to share a copy of my Firefox Portable today, so I copied the folder ("/FirefoxPortable - Copy"), renamed the original ("/FirefoxPortable_") and launched the copied version just to check if it works, expecting no complications after years of moving stuff around.
But today, the copied version started out with important things apparently missing: Immediately, I saw that the Classic Theme Restorer and Tabmix Plus extensions weren't working.
I can't open the extensions' options from the about:addons page, and their options are not listed under Tools anymore, which they used to be. They are, however, still listed as enabled and active.

The story gets weirder: When I rename the folder to the old name where the deployment was working correctly ("/FirefoxPortable"), everything looks normal again!

Clearly, something isn't all that portable anymore, but I don't know what and what to do about it.

Edit:
When a working copy is located in the old location ("/FirefoxPortable"), even a copy in a different folder will "work" again.
It seems to be loading some settings from that old location.

Bookmarks etc are all fine.
The "Open Folder" button for the Profile Folder section in about:support correctly opens the folder \Data\profile, where the portable deployment's default profile is located.

The default profile information under about:profiles points to C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, and that folder existed (I have messed around a lot at some points, so that's not too big of a surprise) - but after I renamed/deleted it, it wasn't recreated, so I doubt that that's being taken into consideration.

Can anybody shed some light on this?

  • What likely happened?
    • How can I find out what's wrong?
  • How can I fix it (back to fully portable)?

I will supply further information as needed, of course!

Thank you, everybody!

John T. Haller
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Likely Running Local

You were likely running it in local mode. This will happen if you set it as default or pin it to the taskbar directly in Windows (which doesn't understand multi-EXE apps). Run FirefoxPortable.exe directly at all times and it should be fine.

Note that your version of Firefox has known security issues and is no longer supported by Mozilla or PortableApps.com.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

Black Platypus
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Update

I sniffed around in the profile folder.

Extensions.json had a bunch of references to the absolute path in it.
I replaced all occurrences of "C:\Program Files\FirefoxPortable Cleaned\Data\profile\" to "\Data\profile\", and the extensions managed to load correctly.
However, Firefox then changed all the paths back to be absolute, now pointing to the new directory.

I don't remember having to do that before. What is happening? O.o

John T. Haller
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Moving

The FirefoxPortable.exe launcher updates the extensions.json on each launch. As long as the whole FirefoxPortable profile is moved intact, that is.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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