Deleting a Firefox Profile also deleted pretty much everything on my desktop, help please?
Hello, today I decided to create a new Firefox Profile. I set the directory of this profile to be my desktop, which is where I usually put things (downloads and such) by default. I thought it would create another folder there on the desktop and put everything inside that, but instead it put a bunch of junk on my desktop. No big deal, right, I can just delete the profile, and that other junk should also be deleted. Well, not only did deleting the Firefox profile delete the extra junk that was created while making the profile, it also, for some reason, has deleted about 90% of everything else on my desktop as well. There are now only a few seemingly random things left on the desktop, that it decided to spare for whatever reason.
Where did everything go? The recycle bin is empty.. Most of it was just shortcuts, not a big deal, but I did have a few folders with some rather important work that I would very much like to retrieve. Please tell me Firefox didn't just nuke my desktop, and that all of those things are now unrecoverable? Windows 7 64 bit
Thanks very much.
Izabrano rješenje
If you use "Choose folder" to create a Firefox profile then you need to specify a dedicated folder and not a folder that already has other files. There are two cases for using "Choose folder", one reason is to register a profile that currently isn't registered like when you delete a profile and keep the files or register a profile you restored from a backup. Another reason is to create a profile that is not located in the standard location. In both cases is the folder you specify used for storing its files. Using "Choose folder" isn't recommended, especially if you do not know its implications that removing this profile and deleting the files will remove all files and not only files created by Firefox.
You would have to use an undelete utility to recover the lost files/folders.
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Odabrano rješenje
If you use "Choose folder" to create a Firefox profile then you need to specify a dedicated folder and not a folder that already has other files. There are two cases for using "Choose folder", one reason is to register a profile that currently isn't registered like when you delete a profile and keep the files or register a profile you restored from a backup. Another reason is to create a profile that is not located in the standard location. In both cases is the folder you specify used for storing its files. Using "Choose folder" isn't recommended, especially if you do not know its implications that removing this profile and deleting the files will remove all files and not only files created by Firefox.
You would have to use an undelete utility to recover the lost files/folders.
In the "Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles" KB article there is this warning. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles#w_creating-a-profile
Warning: If you choose your own folder location for the profile, select a new or empty folder. If you choose a folder that isn't empty and you later remove the profile and choose the Delete Files option, everything inside that folder will be deleted.
Welp, it's a bit too late for that warning now, James, but thank you for responding nonetheless. I noticed that you, cor-el, have answered pretty much this exact same question back in 2012. If you are actually a human and not some kind of bot, it's pretty impressive (and appreciated) that you are still around 12 years later answering the same questions :)
So, yes, Firefox did apparently nuke pretty much my entire desktop. But I was able to use data recovery tools to retrieve the files that I was most worried about, so that's pretty good I guess. Still seems odd, however, that something like this, which seems like quite a major issue, is still a thing 12 years later, since the last time someone had this issue, or at least posted about it.
Anyway, appreciate the help, thank you!
Luckily this doesn't seems to happen that often, but we get regularly get questions about this.
There was another recent question from a user with the profile on the desktop and more questions about registering a lost profile.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/search/?product=firefox&w=2&q=%22Choose+folder%22&page=2
- /questions/1437837 Browser files are in my desktop folder
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