454557 - Cookies.txt file is corrupt

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[jdixon.mail]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

The cookies.txt file has become corrupt and cannot be repaired or deleted, even with chkdsk function.  Firefox still works but is very slow on opening and when revisiting previously viewed pages.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
The corruption cannot be reproduced until a repair is made

Expected Results:  
n/a

Can I uninstall Firefox and reinstall later?
I am actively searching for a reliable file repair tool to attempt a repair of cookies.txt.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Actually, the cookies.txt file isn't used anymore in Firefox 3 ; they're now stored in cookies.sqlite. So you can safely delete it. 

Uninstalling wouldn't work - that doesn't remove the profile.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

That cookies.txt can not be deleted is a File System problem, could be caused by a crashing system during write operations.
If you can not delete it while Firefox isn't running then Firefox also can not delete it.
It's possible that a Anti-virus software or some other kind of "privacy" software opens the file but you would get a file in use error. You neither didn't mentioned the used file system (ntfs vs fat32) or what kind of error message you get.
If the file is just locked by another application you can use freeware utilitys to see which application locks the file.
You can also try to delete it in the windows safemode.
And you did a "chkdsk c: /f" followed by a reboot ?
I'm pretty sure that your whole file system is broken if the file isn't locked by an application and chkdsk can not fix the problem.

Firefox3 doesn't use it but it's possible that Firefox3 still tries to import this file during startup of Firefox but there is nothing we can in such a case.

marking invalid