474882 - Empty homepage / bookmarks lost after upgrade / back & next browsing features disabled.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[James Cain]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120121 Firefox/3.0.5

After mozilla upgraded, the back / next feature was disabled.  Backspace did not work either in lieu of back feature.  Uninstalled, reinstalled. Homepage & favourites disappeared, however the homepage of http://news.google.com was retained in the preferences panel.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Please see http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Bookmarks+and+toolbar+buttons+not+working+after+upgrading that should have the information you need.

Comment 2

[James Cain]

Referred to Natch's support topic; did not work.
Also entered safe mode and reset controls.  Did not work.

Comment 3

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Can you provide more information on what is going on here, do you navigate to two pages and then find that you can't step back to the previous page? Also, when you set a home page now, does it stick? Do the controls operate in safe mode? if they do, there could be an extension conflict.

Comment 4

[James Cain]

When I open firefox, it is a blank screen with nothing in the nav bar and yet in my preferences, my homepage is typed out.  So, in other words, it does not stick.

The controls do not work in safe mode.  They are just as inoperable as when I'm out of safe mode.

Comment 5

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Can you try to delete localstore.rdf from your profile http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles#How_to_find_your_profile , then create a new profile http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#Make_a_new_profile , and see if everything is fixed?

Comment 6

[James Cain]

There is no profile in Application Preferences; I have time machine and went back several days when firefox was working.  There doesn't seem to have been a profile there anyway.

Same with a firefox folder in Application Support / Library --- there is a Mozilla folder but there is nothing there indicative of a profile.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled mozilla firefox 3 times today; each time it comes up blank with nothing in the nav bar, no favourites and the back / advance buttons greyed out, no matter how far I browse.

Firefox has become a paperweight.

Comment 7

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Quote from the link mentioned above:

1.  Open Finder and go to your home folder. Note: your home folder is usually the name of your Mac user account
2. From your home folder open /Library/, then /Application Support/, then /Firefox/, then /Profiles/.
3. Open your profile folder. By default, it is /xxxxxxxx.default/ where xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.

There _must_ be a profile for firefox to work at all, the name of the profile folder, as stated above, is {something}.default. You have to look in Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles and you should find it. Otherwise firefox will recreate a profile on application startup, and if that fails, firefox won't work. Do you have write access to the profile directory?

Comment 8

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

To see your profiles, you can start firefox from the commandline with -P to open the profile manager.

Comment 9

[James Cain]

Close out the bug.

I was looking at the profile in the main folder as opposed to my own personal folder.  I moved the profile to the desktop and reinstalled firefox.  

Everything was restored; I couldn't retreieve my bookmarks but that's ok.

Comment 10

[Nochum Sossonko [:Natch]]

Thanks.

->WORKSFORME