Creating a New Profile is often used to debug problems
as an adjunct to Starting in Safe Mode. By testing
with another profile you do not involve your current
use of Firefox.
Profile folder
contains
user's personal information such as bookmarks, extensions, and user preferences in a unique profile. The first time you start Firefox, it will automatically create a default profile; additional profiles can be created using the
Profile Manager.
Creating a New Profile
Testing in Safe Mode
Starting in Safe Mode starts Firefox without the use
of Extensions and is used for various reason similar to
- Start Firefox when Firefox will not start due to a bad
extension(s) or various other and unknown reasons.
- To see if something will work in Firefox with extensions
disabled -- to see if problem is extension related or not.
From the Windows Start, Run,
firefox.exe -s
Creating a New Profile
To check if a specific extension is solely responsible for
a problem after finding that Firefox works only in Safe
Mode, you might create a clean new profile and install the
one extension in it. To create the new profile:
By creating new profile you are not touching
your original profile at all.
If you are on Windows go to System Start, Run,
firefox.exe -p
choose create a new profile giving it a short name.
For more information or if you are not on Windows see
Command line arguments - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments
More information on profiles on my
Firefox Customizations page.
To indentify your profile folder in the new profile you can
type about:cache on the location bar, dropping
the cache folder off the end is your profile folder. I would
create a key word shortcut for that immediately, once you
start playing with things the cache could be moved to another
folder so you won't see that method shown at Mozilla --
I sure wish Firefox had a builtin means for a user locate
their profile without scripts or extensions
Multiple Profiles (#multi)
It is not necessary to use another drive
or to use Firefox Portable
on a USB stick, you can test with multiple profiles easily on your main system.
Rather than disabling a lot of extensions you might want to make up another
profile to test a specific extension with no interference from previous use of
that extension or any other extension, so it will be just firefox and one
extension almost like safe mode.
- firefox.exe -safe-mode — to run in safe mode
- firefox.exe -p — to create a new profile
- firefox.exe -profilemanager — to select which profile to use
More profile information in
Testing with Safe Mode and New Profiles (#safemode)
Some specific tests to help isolate a Firefox problem before
asking for assistance or reporting a bug to a developer. To
speed up testing I create some system shortcuts and have
them available in the Windows Launch Pad instead of having to
start them from Start, Run. See
Creating keyword shortcuts for your profile and chrome directories .
- If you suspect a specific extension, disable it (Tools, Add-ons,
disable), and restart and test Firefox. Some particularly
Problematic extensions listed at MozillaZine Knowledge Base.
- Start FF in safe mode with old profile ( to check whether add-ons are
causing this problem )
- Create a test profile and check ( to check whether this problem is
caused by any external program )
- Move content of plugins folder elsewhere (or rename the folder), start FF in normal mode with old profile ( to check whether plugins are creating any problem)
- Running different versions of Firefox at the same time, Some advanced users like to be able to run two or more different versions of Firefox at the same time. To achieve this, the best approach is to have a different Firefox profile for each version of Firefox you want to run.