I have Firefox on a hard drive that is failing. I was unable to boot into Windows from it so I put a second drive in and did a fresh install of Windows onto it, The PC is a member of my home domain and I log in only with a network account. I need to know what I need to move from the F drive to the C drive so I can acess all my old bookmarks and cashed passwords.
First, it’s spelled ‘cached’.
Second, this depends on whether you mind downloading the executable again. If you are willing to, there’s only one directory that needs to be saved. If you are not, you have to save two.
First, I’m assuming Windows XP. It’s the only Windows variant I’ve ever run Firefox on, and it’s all I have access to right now.
Replace in X and ‘Your Name’ with site-specific information.
The directory you must save is X:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles. This, and the directories under it, contain all of the information unique to your installation of Firefox. This includes cookies, bookmarks, extensions, and themes.
The directory you might save is X:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox. This includes the stuff that isn’t changed by the user, including the Firefox executable itself.
Your “profile” folder in Firefox, which is usually
c:\documents and settings<user name>\application data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.xxx
Install Firefox on the new system, move your profile data over. On your way to that subdirectory you’ll pass a file called profiles.ini, which you should edit to point to the correct default.xxx directory name.
Aye thats the rub. I installed the GooglePack on the system so I would have an Anti-Virus from the getgo (will be uninstallingNorton and puttingAVG on it soon) and it installed Firefox so I don’t need to download and install it.
I’m not sure which user account to copy over so I’ll copy them all and try them one at a time. I hope I’m not too late because I’m getting delayed write failures onm the drive now
MannyL: Top-posting is annoying. Annoying people in a position to help you is Not Smart. Place your reply beneath what you are replying to like 99.999% of the people in this forum, and remove what is not relevant to your post.
Thank you.
Let me retry that I did not mean to annoy you or anyone. I pasted my reply in the wrong area of the window.
In f:\My Documents and settings\ I have three file folders username.001 username.002 username.003 I do not whow which is the correct one so I will copy all three to my new drive and put the files where you suggested.
I pointed out I have Firefox now because I installed google pack, and I am wondering if because I installed Firefox prior to copying over the folders if that will pose a problem.
My questions may be moot because I seem to be unable to copy the files now due to delayed write errors on the failing drive. It’s popping up in $MFT and every indivdual file I try to copy over. I even tried booting into safe mode. I have a few ideas of how to possibly get past this problem but not 100% sure if they will pan out.
I have tried running chkdsk on the drive and it will not complete.
I can’t run MaxBlast because the version I have will not support SATA drives.
I’m hoping I’m not too late in copying some of my data off.
Again I apoligize in how my reply came formatted.
MannyL: Apology accepted. Top-posting tops the list of online discussion pet peeves for me ;).
Well, it sounds like the drive is dying. That’s probably a physical problem if ScanDisk won’t even complete, as opposed to an OS or application fault. Which is really too bad, as getting data off a dead disk ranges from ‘really expensive’ to ‘really expensive but impossible anyway’.
In Linux, where I have the most experience, it’s possible to delete an existing Firefox preferences directory (the directory that contains cookies and bookmarks and such) and replace it with a different one without problems. I can’t see how things would be different in Windows. I wouldn’t try doing this for directories maintained by different Firefox versions, however.
I don’t see how the Google Pack would make things any different. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
You can drill down into those different login name directories and see which one has your current bookmarks file in it. That file is in the profile directory, called bookmarks.html, and can be read with a plain text reader. Copy this file and you have your bookmarks.
For your passwords, you need to copy the files signons.txt and key3.db.
For your cookies, get the file cookies.txt.
Some extra advice after you, hopefully, can get FF and everything else working on the new HDD.
The three most importing things in computing are: Backup, backup, and backup!
Either get an external HDD and backup frequently, or the less expensive alternative, a new second internal HDD to replace the dead one. It’s also faster to backup to that, and you can also use it for extra storage.
Good luck.
My systems never fail untilthe point I start a backup. I was hoping to blindside the system into letting me copy over the needed information. I have copies of almost everything else on mutiple systems on the network