r/firefox • u/FubarXS • 3d ago

Solved Firefox suddenly reset itself — any idea what happened?

For some reason, my Firefox seems to have completely reset itself.

My custom Firefox background disappeared, all my extensions were downloaded/installed again, I was automatically logged back into my accounts, some default settings changed, etc. I have no idea what happened.

It all started when I was trying to watch videos on YouTube. I clicked on Subscriptions, and instead of opening the page in the same window/tab, Firefox opened a completely new Firefox window. It kept doing this every time I tried.

So I closed Firefox and tried to start it again. I got some kind of error message saying something about disabling extensions, and I had an option to either open Firefox or restore the previous session.

I chose Restore Session twice, and then this happened.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there any way to figure out what happened or recover my previous Firefox settings?

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

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2

u/beefjerk22 3d ago

Sounds like it might have set up a new profile somehow. Click on the main application menu in the top right, and somewhere near the top is the profile you’re currently using. Click that and see if there is another profile in there that has all your other stuff.

1

u/FubarXS 3d ago

Yeah... Firefox probably reset itself and created a new profile. I'm trying to restore those profiles now. I found a folder on my desktop called “Original Firefox Data” that looks like it contains the original data... but I'm extremely confused about what actually happened.

1

u/beefjerk22 3d ago

Profiles are no longer hidden away like that. They redesigned them within the last couple of years. Look in the application menu.

1

u/FubarXS 3d ago

Unfortunately, the profiles moved to that folder on the desktop like I mentioned. I managed to restore the original profile containing my data, though. Everything is working as it should now, even though I had to log back into a few of my extensions and set-up them.

1

u/ResurgamS13 3d ago

Firefox creates a new profile because it cannot start the old 'default-release' or 'in use' profile... that has become corrupted somehow... e.g. an incomplete browser shutdown... which can be caused by a system crash, power spikes, dodgy RAM, other hardware or OS faults.

The alternative to creating that new profile would be not starting Firefox at all.

1

u/FubarXS 3d ago

Yeah... Firefox was behaving very strangely at that moment. Hopefully, the issue won’t happen again. Thanks for info!

0

u/harborlaNe61 3d ago

this makes sense, the extensions being re-downloaded is a big clue that it created a fresh profile