

Tell HN: How to Get Your Profile Back If You Remove Firefox - mahmud

I have just left an scathing flame on the firefox forums and can't find the link anywhere (forgot what support site it was on.)<p>I made a habit of trying the latest bleeding-edge Firefox builds, called "Minefield". I removed one last night, and it took with it 3-years worth of highly curated data; bookmarks, tags, passwords, browsing history and other stuff. It's absolutely paralyzing to go back to zero. I was shocked and horrified and let the Firefox folks have it.<p>I didn't need to. Here is how to get it back (on Windows XP at least.)<p>C:\Documents and Settings\<i>user-name</i>\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<p>The directories in there are your profiles. Copy them to somewhere for backup. Firefox will have one of them as its active profile, and if you delete the active profile Firefox will never start, thinking it's still running.<p>List the directories by details, and one with the freshest timestamp is the active one. Move it out. Then change the names of all the remaining directories to its name, one by one, launching Firefox after each rename. Always check your bookmarks and your history.<p>I got my work back quicker than it took me to write a flame for Mozilla and trashing them in public. I feel horrible.<p>And yes, I am getting a Firefox t-shirt to make up for it.
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mattyb
You use Windows?

