I had the fbi virus scam hit me and I have lost all my settings after resetting FF
I got hit with the fbi scam virus (don't know how as I use a Mac) and I don't know if its gone or not but I reset FF to its default state using the procedure outlined here. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-preferences-fix-problems
But after doing this, all my settings, my user profile and my exceptions list in privacy that I have been painstakingly putting together over years, has just disappeared and I am quite annoyed.
If these settings are recoverable, how do I restore my previous FF state?
Všechny odpovědi (13)
See Time Machine:
The info in the Recover important data from an old profile article is exactly what you need. The important thing to remember is that Firefox cannot be running when you copy the files over.
When you follow the instructions on that page, how far do you get before it gets too confusing? We'll help you through it.
I get to the point where I am to locate my Profile Folder. I find it but looking at the permissions.sqlite file, it has today's date. Is that OK?
If so, I can proceed to back up my profile.
The files in your currently used profile will always have today's date if ti are files that are updated regularly as most sqlite databases will.
If you want to restore lost data from the past then you need an older copy of the corresponding file.
Note that replacing files with older copies will cause data that has been saved more recently to get lost.
Are you using the Time Machine on your computer?
That is usually the easiest way to restore lost or corrupted files on Mac.
I've never heard of time machine before now, so I don't think it can help me.
Where would an older copy of the file be?
If I understand correctly, you found your profile by using the Troubleshooting Information page. That will find the profile you are using. That's the location to copy files to. Your old profile data should be located in a folder on your desktop.
I have a folder on my desktop called Old Firefox Data. Out of this folder, there are two further folders with weird names and each folder ends with .default.
What now?
You can check the files dates in each of the two profile folders with the xxxxxxxx.default names in the "Old Firefox Data" folder to see which is the most recent and copy the needed files from that folder to the current profile folder.
But both profile folder dates are the same and also, they are older than the date the initial problem occurred, so it looks like I have no folder that pre-dates the event that caused me the trouble in the first place (Nov 12).
Regardless of the dates, the "Old Firefox Data" folder is the one that gets created when you do a reset.
To open your current profile folder, just go to Help > Troubleshooting Information, then click on Show in Finder.
From that point, you need to quit Firefox before copying the files over, so it's best to have the Recover important data from an old profile article open in another browser, like Safari.
Either I'm not explaining the situation clearly or you aren't understanding the problem.
I don't care about the current profile as it has no interest/value to me at all I only want to recover the profiles I had before the FBI scam hit me.
I don't know if those profiles exist anywhere but if they do, where can I find them and restore them.
If you do not have a backup copy of the profile folder that is older than when the problem occurred then you won't be able to restore settings data from before the problem started and you will have to do with what you have and see what is still usable. Data that you can't recover can be considered as lost.
Readers of this thread may be interested in a related thread about a scam using FBI or Europol names and site addresses. It is in fact not a virus and very easy to deal with. There is nothing much to remove and it can be dealt with in seconds see
- WARNING FBI LOCKED BROWSER!!! /questions/981475#answer-516676