Sometimes you have to do a full, clean install of your Firefox profiles, this is more of an issue if you've been updating regularly, and have been somewhat lazy about getting rid of old extensions and themes in the default profile. MatthewHSE has many times recommended always creating a new user profile for each new install, and he's right, I finally bogged mine down completely, and had to start from scratch.

However, all is not lost. Before deleting your old profile folder, simply make a copy of it somewhere.

With Firefox off, delete the old profile folder.

Restart firefox, it will ask if you want to create a new profile or use the default. If you are only running one version of firefox, the latest, also check 'don't ask at startup', it will then simply use the profile you created. Create a profile. I name mine after the version number, so for Firefox 1.0 , firefox10. Make a note of where that user data profile is located on your computer.

Then select that one, and start firefox. All your user data is now gone, but your Firefox browser has created the new profile. Close Firefox. Go to your old, saved copy. Drag the following files into your newly created profile directory:

Once it's done, reopen Firefox. All your favorites, cookies, browsing, form and login history is now back.

Next you'll want to reinstall your extensions. Make sure the version you install is compatible with the Firefox version you have.

And that's it, just reconfigure your extensions and you'll be ready to go.
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