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Reinstalling of Firefox and Thunderbird

#1 User is offline   floyd 

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Posted 20 October 2009 - 02:25 PM

I am going to be buying a new computer soon and in anticipation I don't want to have to restore all my preferences, addon, bookmarks in FF, as well as my address book and account setups in TB. What do I have to backup to make this painless.

I presently backup daily the entire directory's of:
Document and settings\User name\application data\Mozilla\, as well as
Document and settings\User name\application data\Thunderbird.

After reinstalling will I just be able to copy these 2 directories over to the new install and be good to go, or an I being naive.
Can someone please advise me.
Thank you very much.
Floyd :thumbsup:

I use XP pro SP3
Firefox 3.5.3
Thunderbird 2.0.0.23

#2 User is offline   tg1911 

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Posted 20 October 2009 - 09:44 PM

It's not quite that easy Floyd, but it's not that hard, either. :thumbsup:
I've done it a few times, without any problems.

This will restore Firefox with all of it's settings, passwords,and Extensions, still intact:

Navigate to:
C:\ Documents and Settings \ "your user name" \ Application Data \ Mozilla \ Firefox \ Profiles
Make a copy of the Profiles folder, and save it to a CD.

Reformat your computer, then reinstall Firefox.
Make sure Firefox is not running, before proceeding.

Locate the new Profiles folder, and delete it.
Replace it with the old Profiles folder, that you copied, and saved.
Open the Profiles folder, and copy the name of the default folder.
It'll be random numbers, followed by .default.
It will look something like this:
amdz6b0s.default

Click Back, and open the profiles.ini file, in Notepad.
At the bottom, you'll see, Path=Profiles/xxxxx.default (the x's are random numbers)
The xxxxx.default that you see, was the name of the default file, in the Profiles folder you just deleted.
Replace xxxxx.default, with the name of the one you just made a copy of.
At the top, click File, and select Save.
Exit out of Notepad.

Now when you open Firefox, you should have all of your settings, passwords, extensions, etc., just like it was, before the reformat.


Follow the same procedure for Thunderbird.
It'll retain all of your Mail, settings, everything.

Sounds complicated, but it's not. :flowers:
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