Firefox Dies On Me

So, there I am, happily browsing around on Firefox, making good use of some of the features (like tabbed browsing, letting me flip back and forth between pages, etc.) and all of a sudden, it stops loading pages.  Well and good, no problem, just shut 'er down and open it up again.  Except when I click on the icon, I get some sort of user profile query, asking me which profile I want to use.  I click default, being as it's the only choice, and am told "Not able to do that - profile in use". 

Whatever.  I click on "New Profile", and get a whole new screen - only this one has none of my bookmarks, history, automatic passwords ... nuttin'.

Pain in the arse?  I guess so.  If anybody knows anything about Firefox and can tell me how to get all my stuff back, I'd appreciate it.  It'd save me a whack of work.

Or do I just wander over to Opera ...?

Comments

[Craig Willson]

Nils - that happened once to me too. I closed everything, powered off the box and turned it back on. All was well again. I still have no idea what happened and credit it to 'just because'.

[Cyn]

Happened to me last night. I'm good now. I did what Craig did.

[Nils]

Nope. Just came up with this profile again. I wonder if it's possible to change back and forth between profiles. Nothing in any help file I've found (yet) tells me how to do that. What a pain. You forget how spoiled you are, not having to type names, e-mails, web pages and stuff into all those forms ...

[Lynne]

Do the ctrl alt delete thing and see if firefox is still in there (although highly unlikely if you've restarted).

Failing that, do a roll back on windows to the day where it was working properly, that corrected it for me.

Then back up your profile just in case it happens again.

I think it's happened to everyone at one point. Here's my post http://cariadsrealm.net/journal/index.php?p=1019

[Nils]

Know what's funny, Lynne? Your post and mine are almost identical in terms of language and tone and the way we explain what happened ... weird.

Now ... umm ... how does one "roll back Windows" ... I KNOW I should know this ...

[Craig Willson]

Start button > help > undo changes to your computer with system restore > next > pick a date from the calendar > next

Go sip something while Windows cranks and thrashes.

Be happy (hopefully)

[Rob MacD]

Nils, if you created a new profile and called it something specific (so that it won't automatically default to, well 'default), you should be still able to access your original default settings and bookmarks etc.
Try this link regarding managing bookmarks:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

I assume you're using XP... so navigate to:
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ (where [User Name] is whateve you call your XP domain

Once in the Profiles folder, you should hopefully see a 'default' folder and whatever you called the newest profile. Make sure your Firefox is turned off (do a ctr/alt/delete to bring up Task Manager, and make sure firefox.exe is not still running). You should be able to delete the newest profile, and the next time you start up Firefox you should have your Firefox exactly as it was before the mishap.

I think what happened was...you shut down Firefox, it didn't fully shut itself down, and when you went to restart it, you got the message saying firefox is already running, or whatever it was.

By the way, I am not an expert, so please don't blame me if you try what I suggest and it doesn't work, or if it makes your situation worse.

[Rob MacD]

Perhaps before you do what I offer above you could try this, taken from the link I offered:

1. Close Firefox completely (select File > Exit from the main menu of Firefox).
2. Select Start > Run... from the Windows Start menu.
3. Enter firefox.exe -profilemanager and press OK.

This will bring up a window offering you a choice of which firefox profile you want to run. Hopefully, you have two: a 'default' profile (your original one with your bookmarks, cookies, etc.),and your post-mishap profile.

Also, might I suggest you try a site like del.icio.us as an excellent online repository of all your bookmarks. It takes a bit of work to import your current bookmarks (if you ever find them), since you have to manually import each one, but once done, it's fantastic for managing your bookmarks.

[justmytwocents]

(i've never had this problem using Opera.....) :)

[Nils]

Got it all back ... thanks to all of you. Rob, your suggestion about starting and running FF profile manager worked like a charm ...

I still loves Firefox ...

[Lynne]

Glad you got it up and running again. Sorry I didn't post back, been under the weather all week.

Yes it is weird both our posts are very similar :)

[Pacia]

Funny. Although I am an ardent supporter and believer of Firefox, this default profile thing has caught me a couple times and as mentioned before, I have yet to find a comprehensive and working guide on how to fix such a problem. It actually just happened to me today when I decided to search for some help again and Voila! ..here i am and how helpful it was. lol..so I suppose the credit does not all go to Nils personally..but also to the people who contributed to this problem. Thanks so much for all that help..haha.a life saver...

[Josh]

Same thing happened to me today, first sign of trouble w/firefox in six months. Has anyone figured out why this does this? I was loading two pages, they stopped loading. I shut it down, when it came up it had the profile manager. Thanks for the effective advice, but is anyone working on fixing this bug?

[andy]

hey guys its a lock file. its a way to make sure that you dont corrupt your bookmarks by running mozilla/firefox twice...

inside your profile folder theres a file called lock remove it and youll be all set