422142 - Recieved a notice re latest version of Firefox which acted like a virus and wiped out my previous version of FF including all my bookmarks

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 421801

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Peggy Halstead]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

I wrote to you last week concerning this problem, thank you for your response which didn't help.  I was unable to locate any of the files mentioned in your emails. 
Since then I have found the problem to be far more serious than I at first realized.  When tried to open my Firefox browser I found a notice advising me of the new version of Firefox (2.2 or something similar) I was not interested and attempted to erase it and continue to FF.  Unfortunately, this notice acted like a virus and deleted the older version of Firefox and all my bookmarks.
After writing to you, trying your advice on how to restore the bookmarks and finding that advice didn't work.  I was unable to locate any of the files (%APPDATA%) etc., and so tried installing the latest version of FF.
This was a disaster, not only did it not restore my bookmarks I now have no usable browser and am left with the enormous task of restoring my bookmarks.  Since my of them were business bookmarks and contained valuable records (financial etc) which are irreplacable I am not happy  to say the least.
Your advertisment for your new version of Firefox is a virus which severely damages any computer it is sent to.
I have used FF for several years and enjoyed it but I am no doing something I swore I would never do I am switching to Internet Explorer.
If you can offer any suggestions or do anything to resolve this problem I would be grateful.  Until then your customers should be aware any communication you send regarding Firefox can damage their computers  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Actual Results:  
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Expected Results:  
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Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please do not file a bug twice, you also have to search the database for existing bugs before you report a new bug. Bugzilla is also not for support questions, it's a tool for the developers only.

A dataloss can always happen, with all applications and if you have important data then you have to do backups if you don't want to lose them.
%appdata% is btw. a hidden directory on windows and you need to change the explorer settings to see that directory.

Please visit http://support.mozilla.com if you have end-user questions.


This bug is already fixed (should not happen) with the coming Firefox3.

Comment 2

[Jaime Mitchell (use [e-mail] for email)]

Verified Dupe