Hello,

Certain Firefox problems can be solved by performing a Clean reinstall. This means you remove Firefox program files and then reinstall Firefox. Please follow these steps:

Note: You might want to print these steps or view them in another browser.

1. Download the latest Desktop version of Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org and save the setup file to your computer.
2. After the download finishes, close all Firefox windows (click Exit from the Firefox or File menu).
3. Delete the Firefox installation folder, which is located in one of these locations, by default:
   • Windows:
     • C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox
     • C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
   • Mac: Delete Firefox from the Applications folder.
   • Linux: If you installed Firefox with the distro-based package manager, you should use the same way to uninstall it - see Install Firefox on Linux. If you downloaded and installed the binary package from the Firefox download page, simply remove the folder firefox in your home directory.
4. Now, go ahead and reinstall Firefox:
   1. Double-click the downloaded installation file and go through the steps of the installation wizard.
   2. Once the wizard is finished, choose to directly open Firefox after clicking the Finish button.

More information about reinstalling Firefox can be found here.

WARNING: Do not run Firefox's uninstaller or use a third party remover as part of this process, because that could permanently delete your Firefox data, including but not limited to, extensions, cache, cookies, bookmarks, personal settings and saved passwords. These cannot be recovered unless they have been backed up to an external device!

Please report back to see if this helped you!

Thank you.

Thanks for the reply. This didn't solve the problem. the issue seems to be with the %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles folder I tried to create a new profile and I can sort the search engines. However, I lost everything I had on the other profile. So the question would be how to combine both profiles and what should I let intact on the new profile, so that only the files and folders regarding search engines are not restored.

Ok, by creating new profiles and transferring the files and folders from the old profile, a few at a time, to the new one and in between testing the option of organizing the search engines, I was able to narrow down the issue to the prefs file in "C:\Users\XXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.xx" folder. Furthermore, I tried comparing the contents of the two prefs files (the one from the old profile against the one from the new profile) in order to pinpoint the especific offending entry, to no avail. The old prefs file is huge, and it would take me a lifetime to find out which entry is the problem by means of comparing, so I decided to copy about only 10% of the missing entries to the new profile and manually reconfigure all of the other options as they become apparent. So far, I had to only modify a few of the default FF Options. I assume that eventually I will have to deal with the plugins and extensions settings, but so far it seems to be working just as it used to a couple of hours ago, except for the original problem, which has since been solved.

Now, in order to get FF configured exactly as it was, minus the already solved problem, I would need to find out which is the entry in the prefs file which caused the problem in the old profile. If I post here the contents of the file, do you think anyone would be able to find which is that entry?

Thank you very much.

Your System Details shows

Installed Plug-ins

   Shockwave Flash 13.0 r0
   Shockwave Flash 12.0 r0

thanks for the reply. I tried replacing the prefs file with the old one and disabling the plugin, but it still the same. Furthermore, if I disable either one of them, they both disable. I searched in the prefs file for some reference to flash, but found nothing. Keep in mind that when I created the new profile, I copied everything in the old profile folder, except for that file, so it should all be just the same.

Did you try to reorder the search engines via Manage Search Engines in the search bar drop-down list?

Try to delete the search.json file and possible search-metadata.json and search.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder to reset the search engines to the default.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Firefox will rebuild the search.json file from the default search engines in the "browser\searchplugins" folder in the Firefox program and the searchplugins folder in the Firefox profile folder.

You can check for problems with preferences.

Delete a possible user.js file and numbered prefs-##.js files and rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in the current Firefox release.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Resetting_preferences

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox