Had a weird one with Firefox 3.6 that I thought I’d share with you all. I wanted to test some web site stuff and so I deleted all my browser cookies to make sure I appeared to the site as a new user. This action also had an unexpected side-effect of deleting all my saved passwords. Looking back at the situation there may have already been some file corruption which was made worse when I deleted all my cookies. I looked at my saved password file and it appeared to be a similar size to usual except there didn’t seem to be anything in there. Also, the corruption had a very visible effect. Now whenever Firefox asked if I wanted to save my password I clicked Remember but the button didn’t do anything. It clicked down and up, but the bar on which it was placed remained. Needless to say it didn’t remember any new passwords either.

1. Shutdown Firefox.
2. Went to C:\Documents and Settings\myusername\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and moved my profile directory (b0eqore3.default) to the desktop.
3. Started Firefox.
4. Firefox reports it is already running and won’t start.
5. Checked process list and Firefox is definitely not running.
6. Shutdown Firefox.
7. Moved my profile directory back to its original location.
8. Firefox started normally and passwords were back!

Even though I effectively did nothing it all worked and I haven’t had a problem since. You have to love computers don’t you!