Did you remove personal data when you uninstalled Waterfox?

Selecting this choice usually removes all the profiles that are present in the default profile location in AppData\Roaming\, so it is likely that the Firefox profile got removed that way.

You would have to use an undelete utility to recover your Firefox profile.

• Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Note that it isn't guaranteed that files were recovered undamaged as it is always possible that clusters have been reused in the meantime.

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

Yes, I deleted the personal data. At no time did I see any kind of warning that deleting Waterfox data would delete Firefox data or that Firefox and Waterfox shared one profile. Maybe Mozilla should consider adding such a warning somewhere? Just my $.02.

Thanks for the help. Hopefully, I haven't lost over 8 years of stored data.

I tried Recuva... It found no deleted files related to my previous profile. I find this odd since it found deleted files all the way back to 2012. I even used the tree sort method to find anything associated with my appdata. I then tried a Windows restore back to 6/22/15. Still nothing. I don't understand how this data just vanished. It doesn't even show that the data was overwritten. It's just not there.

I'm pulling my hair out. The sheer quantity of info I just lost is crazy. Not to mention all of the cookies and saved password associated with sites I use frequently but are not sensitive so I saved the passwords in FF.

I had bookmarks to magazine articles about engine builds I refer to almost weekly and online stores that sell parts I need but took forever to find. I'm just speechless right now. It's gonna take me weeks if not months to fix this.

This is seriously something Mozilla needs to address. There is no reason why FF and Waterfox should have been that intertwined. There's no reason why they couldn't have separate profiles.

Well, I'd better get to work... It's gonna be a long night.

i8acobra said

Yes, I deleted the personal data. At no time did I see any kind of warning that deleting Waterfox data would delete Firefox data or that Firefox and Waterfox shared one profile. Maybe Mozilla should consider adding such a warning somewhere? Just my $.02. Thanks for the help. Hopefully, I haven't lost over 8 years of stored data.

First off, Waterfox is a 3rd party application - it isn't 'built' by Mozilla.

2nd - Mozilla removed that option from Firefox [remove all personal data and customizations] many versions ago.

3rd - as far as 3rd party applications using Firefox code, Waterfox could have done as PaleMoon has done by having its Profiles in a unique AppData/Roaming path away from /Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/ = ~/AppData/Roaming/Moonchild Productions/PaleMoon/Profiles/Profile_name/

Sorry for your loss.

Didn't know it wasn't Mozilla. I was told to use it 3 years ago by someone here because an application I use at work didn't like Firefox. I was using Waterfox for work and FF at home. The newer version of that software I use at work started working with FF, so I never used Waterfox again. That was 2 years ago.

Yesterday, I was cleaning up my laptop, removing programs I no longer use when I saw I still had Waterfox. When it asked if I wanted to remove the data I figured "why not, not gonna need Waterfox anymore".

Guess maybe I should be pissed at the Waterfox people for not popping up some sort of warning that deleting Waterfox data with annihilate FF too.