Daily Cup of Tech

For whatever reason, a complete reinstall of Windows will happen to just about every PC user. If you’re lucky, you can back-up your data before you have to format the drive. Even if you never have a reinstall, Firefox can have corruption or an extension could wipe out your bookmarks, preferences or an update of Firefox can have unintended bad consequences. If you have ever had to backup your Firefox bookmarks, preferences, start pages, and extensions, you know that it can be time consuming and difficult. Luckily, there’s a solution that can do these things for you. It may sound a little difficult but the amount of time you save combined with how much work it saves you is incredible so the difficulty of this tip is: intermediate.

If you haven’t set up a second profile for Firefox, you will need to do that before anything else.

First, you need to create a short-cut to Firefox that opens the Profile Manager. The easiest way to do this is to simply make a copy of an already existing Firefox shortcut. Rename it “Mozilla Firefox Profile Manager” (or whatever you wish). Next, you will need to right click on the shortcut and select “Properties” from the context menu. The “Shortcut Properties” dialog will open. If the “Shortcut” tab is not selected, select it now.

The area you want to make changes is the “Target” text box. This holds the program location for the shortcut. If you’ve got a default setup, the target should have the following text (including quotes):

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”

What you want to do is change it so that it reads as follows:

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -ProfileManager

Notice that the -ProfileManager is outside of the quotes and there is a space between the target and the stuff behind it.

Click “OK” and the dialog will disappear.

Now, double click the shortcut you’ve just created and modified and the Firefox profile manager should start. For the novices here, this is nothing to stress over although it may look a little complicated. Just take your time and look at it. Chances are you’ll have only one profile (default) and there will be a check mark in the “Don’t ask at startup” option. You want to uncheck that option.

Next, you want to click “Create Profile” and a “Create Profile” dialog will appear. The first screen is some information that tells you about profiles. Read it if you like and click next.

You will be asked to name the profile. Name it whatever you like and click Finish.

The Profile Manager dialog will reappear. Select your new profile and click “Start Firefox.” Firefox will open and be exactly like it was when you first installed it. Follow this link and install FEBE. FEBE is the Firefox Extension Backup Extension and will backup and restore entire profiles including settings, bookmarks, extensions and all their settings. In short, it will allow you to create a snapshot of Firefox and restore it any time you wish.

Once FEBE is installed, you will need to restart Firefox. Once you restart, you will need to open the FEBE addon (Tools, FEBE –> FEBE Options). Click on the “Directory” toolbar button at the top of the “FEBE Options” dialog and set a directory for the “Backup destination directory.” Click OK.

Close Firefox and restart it using your normal profile and install FEBE as before. This time, after you set the Backup destination directory, you will click the “Schedule Backups” toolbar button and select a time for your profile to be backed up. Once you have selected a time you like, click the Options toolbar button and look at the right column of options. Place a checkmark in the “Backup entire profile” option (this will cause the entire left column to be disabled). Click OK.

Now that that is set, click on Tools, FEBE–> Perform Backup. FEBE will immediately backup and store your profile in the location you specified. If you like, you can perform a daily back-up of this profile (it will be in the location you specified) but don’t lose this file! It is what you will use to restore Firefox to how you have it set at the time of the last backup.

When you’re ready to restore your profile, you need to make sure that you have two profiles set up like you did for the first part of this post because you can’t restore your profile into the profile currently in use. Go into your clean profile that you don’t use normally. If it is a clean reinstall of Firefox, you will need to reinstall FEBE. Follow the instructions above for the first FEBE install. Restart if necessary and load the profile that you just installed FEBE into. This time, you want to restore your profile. Click Tools, FEBE –> Restore –> Restore Profile. The “Restore Profile” dialog will open and you will need to select your profile back-up file. Click OK and another “Restore Profile” dialog will open and list the profiles you have in Firefox. Choose the profile you want to use daily and click OK. A confirmation dialog will appear. Click OK to proceed and FEBE will restore everything that you had when you last performed a backup. Follow any other prompts FEBE may present and restart Firefox with your normal profile. Everything should be in place.

If you use the daily back-up feature of FEBE, a complete and clean reinstall of Firefox should take only the time it takes to install Firefox, set up a second profile, install FEBE in the clean profile and perform the restore operation. Alternatively, you can always manually back up your bookmarks, note any start pages you have, make a list of your add ons and themes, and so forth until you’re ready to perform a clean install of Firefox and restore each preference and start page and search for and install each extension.

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