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New Downloads of Firefox will not open

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  • 4 have this problem
  • 21 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Just downloaded 19.0.2 and still getting an error message when I try to open:

PROFILE MISSING "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

I tried the terminal utility "profile manager" routine, but it can't find anything to manage. A search of the Mac returns null on "firefox profile". I don't understand why, if the profile is missing, a clean download will not solve the problem?

I'm running 10.7.5 on a Macbook Air

I feel like I'm in Mash. The following "help" assumes I'm in Firefox, which isn't happening.

Just downloaded 19.0.2 and still getting an error message when I try to open: PROFILE MISSING "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." I tried the terminal utility "profile manager" routine, but it can't find anything to manage. A search of the Mac returns null on "firefox profile". I don't understand why, if the profile is missing, a clean download will not solve the problem? I'm running 10.7.5 on a Macbook Air I feel like I'm in Mash. The following "help" assumes I'm in Firefox, which isn't happening.

All Replies (2)

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Maybe the first thing is to find out if you actually have a Firefox profile. If you look in your user library, you will see first a folder that says "Application Support". Inside that should be a folder named "Firefox", which in turn has a profiles.ini file plus another folder called "Profiles", and in that one a file with a random name and the extension name ".default". In order to see the files at all, you have to make the user library visible. This page lists several ways to see library files:

This describes what might actually be the problem with the profile:

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Try to delete the profiles.ini file to force Firefox to create a new profiles.ini file and a new default profile.

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile.