I have been a portable firefox user for quite some time now, and Ive experienced this for the third time now.
On these rare occasions, my firefox wont load any of my addons including extensions and skins. I keep maybe only two or three themes, but extensions... well i would say i had a good 50+ I use, and i find all of them usefull. After the second happening of this i started keeping bookmarks of the extensions donwload pages, even tho its a huge hassle to install each one of them again. Pretty much firefox just loads up everything but my addons, and when it happens the first time, it nvr loads my addons again, leaving only one solution, to completly delete and reinstall my firefox following exporting my bookmarks. I checked the firefox folder and found some files which i recognize to be extension files, and i can tell because of the space used by the portable firefox folder (currently 77mb) and so its obvious that all my extensions are still there. I still have plenty of space left on my usb (about 200 mb free) so i doubt that has to do with it. Im assuming its just too many extensions for firefox to load, but idk why it happens when it loads them perfectly fine plenty of times before.
I'm not sure if i have just been repeating myself, but i hope you understand my problem. Im currently holding off on reseting in hopes of not having to reinstall all over again, and possibly finding a way to prevent it happening again.
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This just happened to me for the third time too. So frustrating!!!! Has anyone figured out why this happens or a fix for it?
This *ALWAYS* happens due to corruption within the profile. This is more likely on a portable device because there is the chance you could remove it without safely ejecting (which you should NEVER EVER do... but lots of people do at least occasionally). There's also the chance the communications could be interrupted due to faulty USB ports, etc.
Either way, it's not specific to the portable version... just more likely due to the above. (The above being your responsibility to prevent)
Once corrupted, you need to follow the standard procedures to fix your Firefox profile. In the case of extensions missing, it's usually the extensions.rdf or cache or ini or some file like that. A quick Google search will find that page for you.
Of course, a quick search here would have found you the answers I gave to this question the last three times it was asked. Please, in the future, search here and Google before posting a question.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
What do you mean by 'safely ejecting'? Do you mean you can't just unplug the flash drive? And if so why not, is that because you mean PF must be closed first? (I'm a little confused).
EDIT:
____
Actually I saw what you posted elsewhere.
Safely eject a standard USB flash drive or portable hard drive
1. If hidden, click the arrow near the system tray to show the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon.
2. Left-click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon (it's a green arrow pointing to the left).
3. Click "Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Device - Drive(X:)" (obviously, pick the correct drive letter if you have more than one plugged in).
You should always safely eject. Whether or not you're running software. If you happen to pull the device when it's writing, it'll corrupt some (or all) of your files.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Backup, Backup, Backup....
Then if something gets corrupted, Delete/Restore.
Much better than re-installing and reconfiguring, especially 50+ extensions.
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