1107140 - Firefox Reset Button Does Not Reset Firefox Settings

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Migration, defect)

Description

[FredMcD]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0
Build ID: 20141126041045

Steps to reproduce:

Application Basics
Name 	Firefox
Version 	34.0.5

User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0

Because of a few issues, I decided to about:support > Reset Firefox. I backed up every-
thing (FEBE & Opie) and after, pressed the Reset button.


Actual results:

Firefox went thru the motions, but it did not reset anything. My add-ons were still
there. My toolbar icons were still there . . . . .
I tried many times, but it would not reset. I even tried to create a new profile thru
the Profile Manager. It created a new profile, but it was a copy of the old profile
(add-ons, icons . . . . .) I then thought of this, I renamed the
C:\Users\Fred\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox folder by adding .old to it.
I finally got a clean profile.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Can you still reproduce the issue with your old profile? If so, can you create a screencast of what you're doing, and post the about:support information here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?bugid=1107140&action=enter so that we can look at what's blocking Fx Reset/refresh from working? Obviously it works for most people, so there must be something specific going wrong on your machine, but without more details we can't work out what that was...

Comment 2

[FredMcD]

I still have the old profile in a separate folder. If you can give me instructions,
it might be best if I zip the folder and send it to you. I will remove the password files.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to FredMcD from comment #2)
> I still have the old profile in a separate folder. If you can give me
> instructions,
> it might be best if I zip the folder and send it to you. I will remove the
> password files.

Sounds good. Not sure what instructions you need - my email is on bugzilla, and you clearly know where the folder is... password information is in logins.json, signons.sqlite, key3.db, perhaps cert8.db if you have personal certificates, and perhaps the prefs if add-ons are being silly. Let me know if you need more help.

TBH, this bit:

(In reply to FredMcD from comment #0)
> I even tried to create a new profile thru the Profile Manager. It created a new profile, but it was a copy of the old profile (add-ons, icons . . . . .)

is very strange. Did you create the profile in an alternative folder or something? I don't know that there's any way to make this go wrong otherwise.

Comment 4

[FredMcD]

I did not change anything like that. Not until the end when I renamed the Profiles folder.
This, of course, made Firefox create a new untouched profile. I then used FEBE and Opie and
got my original stuff back.

If you can find somewhere I can upload the folder, or a street address, let me know.

Comment 5

[FredMcD]

 * NEW INFORMATION *
Another user has complained that they could not reset Firefox;
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1039513

I have given user the instructions I posted above.

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Fred, you can maybe upload the file using dropbox, google drive, wetransfer.com/filedropper.com or similar? It's possible that Microsoft also lets you allow others to download things off skydrive if you make them public/shared, but I don't know the details there.

Out of curiosity, now that you've made a new profile, if you make another one, can you reset that one or does the problem persist?

Matt, when you get back, any ideas on how to debug this issue any further?

Comment 7

[FredMcD]

Just now, I have reset Firefox. The only problem I now have,
is putting everything back together. Thank you Febe and Opie.

As to sending you the old folder, I have never used something
like this. If you can give me instructions, I will follow them.

BTW, I don't know if this will help. I opened this file, and this was inside;

Folder: C:\Users\Fred\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox.old

prefs.js

user_pref("CT3298582.versionFromInstaller", "10.16.4.19");

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to FredMcD from comment #7)
> Just now, I have reset Firefox. The only problem I now have,
> is putting everything back together. Thank you Febe and Opie.
> 
> As to sending you the old folder, I have never used something
> like this. If you can give me instructions, I will follow them.
> 
> BTW, I don't know if this will help. I opened this file, and this was inside;
> 
> Folder: C:\Users\Fred\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox.old
> 
> prefs.js
> 
> user_pref("CT3298582.versionFromInstaller", "10.16.4.19");

That looks like malware (look at the Google results: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=CT3298582 ). I suggest doing a full scan with whatever security software you have on your machine, and ensuring that it is properly cleaned up. If you don't already have security software, I would recommend that you get some, at least in order to clean up the machine as it is.

I'm going to close this report because unfortunately I don't think there is much we can do to fix Firefox to be completely malware-proof... but I'll leave the needinfo for Matt in case he thinks there is something we can improve about this specific issue...

Comment 9

[FredMcD]

I sent a message to the other user with the same problem
asking for a copy of the same file.

This is what my prefs.js file looks like now.

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default-1420567105157
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/1dzdctya.default-1420567105157
Default=1

Comment 10

[John Hesling [:John99] (NeedInfo me)]

Fred a tip for creating a new default profile: temporarily rename  profiles.ini full instructions at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_default_profile

I also note you have started a sumo thread https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/support-forum-contributors/710997

I do not wish to create unnecessary noise in this bug and so will comment further in the Sumo thread.

Comment 11

[FredMcD]

I posted the Sumo because there was a second user that was
also effected. This way, others will know about the danger.

Thank you all for your time and help.

Comment 12

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to FredMcD from comment #9)
> Name=default-1420567105157
> Path=Profiles/1dzdctya.default-1420567105157

Hmm… the folder name indicates that this profile was reset at Tue, 06 Jan 2015 17:58:25 GMT. It would have been good to see profiles.ini from before the successful reset. My understanding is that this profiles.ini file is from after you renamed the profiles folder. And to double-check, was it the "profiles" folder you renamed or the "Firefox" folder? It seems like you may have had a file system permission issue.

Comment 13

[FredMcD]

I did not know what the issue was, so I decided to get rid of everything (from Firefox point of view),
so I went to C:\Users\Fred\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla and renamed Firefox to Firefox.OLD

I still have the OLD folder.
Hmmm. I was just looking at the OLD folder. The bad prefs.js file is dated 7/15/2013 12:26pm

Found another odd thing. I have, several times over the years, reset Firefox. After a new profile
is created, I rename the old folder by adding =====old to it. Well I looked in the OLD profile folder,
and found many profiles that were created at the same time. Just checked. These were created when
I was unsuccessful when resetting Firefox. Inside those folders is only one file.
times.json  content = {"created": 1417627838252}.. The other folders / files look the same.