Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.
I have uninstalled and reisnstalled Firefox. I have installed different VERSIONS of Firefox. I have deleted my profile files. I have imported old profile files from backups. I have chucked the entire content of the Firefox folder in application support. None of these strategies gets me past the "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." dialog when I try to open Firefox. It literally happens every time I try to boot Firefox now. This started when I used an external boot drive and opened Firefox in MacOS Monterrey. The version being used there was 102.x (on a different drive). That version of Firefox works, using the same computer, but this different boot disk. When I went back to my MacOS 10.13.6 install (which uses a different hard drive, btw), I began to get the "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." message. I have been able to use Firefox flawlessly on MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6) for several years now. I can't fathom why it so suddenly would stop working. I just can't get past that dialog box! Please help! Thanks, David
Toutes les réponses (5)
You get this error because you only copied the profiles and haven't registered the profile in profiles.ini. You have to create a new profile and use "Choose Folder" to register the copied profile.
I have studied the page you referenced very carefully multiple times. Unfortunately, I cannot get Firefox to either read the current profiles.ini file, nor will it generate a new one if I remove the Firefox folder from the Application Support folder in Library.
I do not understand the "Choose Folder" reference in your response. Since I cannot get Firefox to run at all, I have no options to choose any folder. All I get when I try to open Firefox is a dialog box with the text "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible." and Firefox exits when the "OK" button is pressed. I cannot find any way to get Firefox to run at all.
Thanks for your response, David
Also, when I remove the Firefox folder from Application support, it does generate a new version of that folder. However, there is no profiles.ini file generated in that new folder. It only generates two folders called "Crash Reports" and "Pending Pings." Pending Pings is empty and Crash Reports has files in it called "InstallTime20230309232621" and an empty "events" folder. - David
If this didn't work then check the read/write permissions and ownership of files and folders in both main/root and cache locations and possibly remove the Mozilla/Firefox folder.
Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).
- ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/
Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files (Local Directory on about:profiles).
- ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/
I removed these folders from these locations, and tried to boot Firefox. I am still getting the same dialog box, and am unable to get Firefox to load.
I logged in as another user on the same computer, and Firefox works perfectly for the other user. So, something is wrong with some hidden system file on the main user on this machine. Or, somehow, file permissions have gotten messed up in some area of the user files for this user that is very hard to repair.
This is a very challenging problem for me. I was very dependent on Firefox, esp. saved logins, and I am having difficulty navigating the web without them.