the-edmeister's
Firefox Advice
Create a new Profile
-
Close the Firefox browser. Make absolutely sure it is closed by opening the Windows Task Manager and "End Process" any running instances of "firefox.exe".
-
From the Windows desktop
A. click the Start button
B. click the Run... button
C. either type the entire path to "firefox.exe"
(the typical location is
C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox\firefox.exe)
D. or use the Browse... button to locate the "firefox.exe" file.
-
Now that you have the "path to" in the Run box,
enclosed with double quote marks;
add a space, then a hyphen, then a lowercase letter p
without any quotation marks, as in the following image.
[ Please note that some versions of Firefox need
-ProfileManager rather than -p. ]
-
Now that you have the correct command entered in the
Run box, hit the OK button.
You should see the Profile Manager dialog box,
similiar to the following image of my Profile Manager
showing my various Firefox Profiles.
-
Click on Create Profile to create a new Profile
Follow the prompts and you're all set to go.
If you don't get the Profile Manager dialog box, continue reading further down this page.
From the Profile Manager dialog box you can also;
A. Start Firefox with an existing Profile
B. Rename an existing Profile
and
C. Delete an existing Profile
There are also 'check' boxes to allow you to 'work offline'
and to tell Firefox whether or not you want to see the
Profile Manager dialog box everytime you launch Firefox.
If you don't get the Profile Manager dialog box,
you probably had more than one running instance of "firefox.exe" that you missed in the Task Manager OR you have other problems that are keeping the Program Manager from running.
The most likely problem that can keep Firefox and/or the Program Manager from launching has to do with
a file called parent.lock that is created every time Firefox opens, and is supposed to be erased when Firefox is closed by the user.
When Firefox crashes, this file doesn't get erased; so when you attempt to re-start Firefox, "firefox.exe" is still running from before the crash and Firefox thinks your Profile is still being used.
(Of course, there seems to be a real problem with the parent.lock file, because many users have experienced seeing the same dialog box when they had closed Firefox properly.)
The developers of Firefox are working on a fix for this
parent.lock file problem, but meanwhile it is something that we do have to deal with in current versions.
Solution:
With Firefox closed, get into your Profile folder
{ which is a hidden file } and
delete the file called parent.lock.
A. click the Start button
B. click the Run... button
C. either type the entire path to "firefox.exe"
(the typical location is
C:\Program Files\Firefox\firefox\firefox.exe)
D. or use the Browse... button to locate the "firefox.exe" file.
enclosed with double quote marks;
add a space, then a hyphen, then a lowercase letter p
without any quotation marks, as in the following image.
[ Please note that some versions of Firefox need
-ProfileManager rather than -p. ]
Run box, hit the OK button.
You should see the Profile Manager dialog box,
similiar to the following image of my Profile Manager
showing my various Firefox Profiles.
Follow the prompts and you're all set to go.
If you don't get the Profile Manager dialog box, continue reading further down this page.
From the Profile Manager dialog box you can also;
A. Start Firefox with an existing Profile
B. Rename an existing Profile
and
C. Delete an existing Profile
There are also 'check' boxes to allow you to 'work offline'
and to tell Firefox whether or not you want to see the
Profile Manager dialog box everytime you launch Firefox.
If you don't get the Profile Manager dialog box, you probably had more than one running instance of "firefox.exe" that you missed in the Task Manager OR you have other problems that are keeping the Program Manager from running.
The most likely problem that can keep Firefox and/or the Program Manager from launching has to do with a file called parent.lock that is created every time Firefox opens, and is supposed to be erased when Firefox is closed by the user.
When Firefox crashes, this file doesn't get erased; so when you attempt to re-start Firefox, "firefox.exe" is still running from before the crash and Firefox thinks your Profile is still being used.
(Of course, there seems to be a real problem with the parent.lock file, because many users have experienced seeing the same dialog box when they had closed Firefox properly.)
The developers of Firefox are working on a fix for this parent.lock file problem, but meanwhile it is something that we do have to deal with in current versions.
Solution:
With Firefox closed, get into your Profile folder
{ which is a hidden file } and
delete the file called parent.lock.
