363036 - All settings are lost since latest update!

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 319196

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Kris]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8

Ever since I installed the latest firefox update a few days ago, virtually all the preferences/settings are reset to the defaults whenever I close all instances of the browser.  This includes all bookmarks being deleted.

When I open Firefox again, it now always goes to the "firefox has been successfully updated" page.

Here is a list of all the settings that are lost that I've noticed:

Bookmarks
ALL preferences (passwords, cache, download history, download location, cookies, privacy settings, etc)
Those annoying alert boxes warning that you're viewing an encrypted page always re-appear on the next session, regardless of whether you set it to do so or not
The homepage is always reset to the firefox update page
Clear private data settings are reset to default


When I change the settings, they do seem to take effect for the time-being.  For example, if I set the homepage to blank, then open a new window, it goes to a blank homepage.  Same thing with download location and other preferences.  But once I close every instance of the browser, then re-open it, that's when all the settings are back to factory default.


I didn't make any changes to the configuration other than allowing Firefox to install its most recent update, which I do all the time, but never had this problem before.

I tried uninstalling and re-installing Firefox multiple times, but the problem persists.  I'm fresh out of ideas, except of course to just go back to using Opera....


Any thoughts?  Thanks!


--Kris


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install latest update
2. Close all browser instances
3. Run firefox again.  It now is back to all default settings.  No error messages.

Actual Results:  
All the settings are reset and bookmarks are deleted.

Expected Results:  
Hmmm....  NOT delete my bookmarks and reset all my preferences to default?  :P

I skimmed the bugs database and didn't see any other mentions of this.  My guess is that some rare bug occured during the Firefox update, and this caused perhaps some registry conflict or whatever that's causing it to not be able to retain its settings.  But that's just an educated guess of course.

I'm sure if I can completely uninstall this thing 100%, then re-install fresh, it'll work fine.  Problem is, add/remove programs doesn't seem to completely remove it from the system.  I think there may be some registry keys it's leaving in, though I have no idea what they are.

I was unable to reproduce this error on my other computer, which further indicates to me that something simply went wrong during that particular update.  I can just re-import my bookmarks from IE, but first I need to find a way to completely wipe this bitch from my system to get rid of the corrupted configuration stuff.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolbar_customizations_reset_on_startup for instructions on how to fix it.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 319196 ***