Why did Firefox forget my settings? (in Off-topic)

So yeah, late last night I was websurfing. I opened Firefox to start, and some sort of window came up with user options. I tried default, and it gave some sort of error message. So I created a new one and went. And all my bookmarks were lost, all my settings, etc. Clean slate.

Anyone know what happened and what I can do? I had used it quite a while beforehand, and never have had that problem. I'm guessing I'm out of luck, but figured I'd check and see if anyone knew anything.

Open task manager (control + alt +delete) and kill the firefox process.


It seems to be a new bug, when closing firefox it doesn't really close.

It happened to me before it like rolled me back to like 6months ago of bookmarks and stuff. I was mad because I lost so many bookmarks that I needed.

Other times firefox would end up with all bookmarks and links in toolbar gone but then if comp is restarted they would all be back to normal.

The developer of Firefox did that because of the huge wait time when Opening Firefox if it completely kills the process. You may have lost all of your bookmarks if you just created a New user on windows and logged on. I recommend getting Firefox Preloader, found easily using Google. Give your computer a restart and check under Manage Booksmarks, other than trying that if you already haven't - all you can really do is mess around with Google trying to find the solution to your problem.

Same happened to me, just restart PC and u'll be back. :D

Well, I did restart it last night, and it was still just as bad. Ah well. I've got things about the way I had them before, although I'm sure I've lost dozens of bookmarks. Maybe that could be a contest idea... hmmm.

Thanks anyway to everyone here that tried to help.

I gave you the answer, Stryfe has no clue what he is talking about.

When you close Firefox sometimes it hangs the process, this ties up your profile. The next time you launch Firefox it wants to know what profile you want to use since the other one is already in use.

Kill the process and go on with life, that is why restarting your computer does the trick as well, since restarting kills the rogue process.

This is not something that is intended by the Mozilla crew, it is a documented bug.

Hmm... I've noticed the Firefox process running after I close the program, but I haven't had any trouble with my profile when I start the program back up. Luck?

It happens to me, I clicked the firefox icon to launch it, it brings up the profile screen. I check and I have a process running that is using ~18k in memory.

Sometimes firefox simply does not launch when I ask it to, killing the rogue process fixes this.

The bug is listed in the bug database.

Hint: Firefox' settings & bookmarks are saved somewhere(-> google) and thus can be backed up regularly.

Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options, View, and enable "Show Hidden Files And Folders." Go to Start and then Run, type "C:\Documents and Settings\'''Username'''\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\" Go through all of your profiles and look in bookmarks.html and bookmarks.bak, you are bound you find all of your bookmarks.