If you're having firefox problems DO NOT INSTALL OLDER VERSION

RetiredUnit1

RetiredUnit1

Well-known member
If you do it will wipe out all your personalization including the password file.

Fortunately, I had printed out all my accounts and passwords earlier this year after FF was giving me some problems connecting to sites.

FF was crashing so much that I stored a version of the firefoxinstaller on my hard drive. When it refused to connect for an hour this morning whilst I was doing the morning chores, I just went ahead and ran that. All kinds of crap you don't need to know happened after that, but during that crap I went to the 'reinstall previous versions" page and saw THE WARNING. "If you do install an older version firefox will wipe clean your personalization data including passwords as a precaution to prevent backdoor access to your" bla bla BLA BLA BLA blah......

There's 5 hours of my life that I want back...............................................
 
KR Sound said:
Oof. That sucks.
Click to expand...
And it gets better. Right as I sat down to FINALLY get some stuff done online, the FREAKING POWER WENT OUT FOR FOUR HOURS. Neighbor has a police scanner in his car, someone hit a power pole, the line went down and they had to shut the power down.

This is not my day.......
 
Sounds like you have had a day. Installing older versions is fine. Done it several times. Helps to have a FF account that syncs everything between pc, tablet, and phone though. FF will bitch at you on first startup, but once it syncs, its like nothing changed.

For passwords, I use KeePass2. That keeps your passwords in a file on your hard drive. There is a FF plugin called "Kee" that integrates it, so it can work like the builtin function. But you can backup your password file.
 
cwsquared said:
Sounds like you have had a day. Installing older versions is fine. Done it several times. Helps to have a FF account that syncs everything between pc, tablet, and phone though. FF will bitch at you on first startup, but once it syncs, its like nothing changed.

For passwords, I use KeePass2. That keeps your passwords in a file on your hard drive. There is a FF plugin called "Kee" that integrates it, so it can work like the builtin function. But you can backup your password file.
Click to expand...
Firefox allows you to export your data to a .csv file, then you can parse that with a spreadsheet and save it with encryption. I could have done this but I just printed it out to paper instead. I'm about done with FF after this anyway. All it would take is a warning in the install that downgrading deletes *everything*. I'm a programmer so I even know about how little work that is. All my bookmarks are toast, and wouldn't you know it my backup program RDISK refuses to access any of the backups. son of a.......
 
cwsquared said:
For passwords, I use KeePass2. That keeps your passwords in a file on your hard drive. There is a FF plugin called "Kee" that integrates it, so it can work like the builtin function. But you can backup your password file.
Click to expand...
It's a bit of a pain to sync across devices though, you can do it with Google Drive or something but I wouldn't recommend it.

I've switched over to Bitwarden from Keepass and Kee, and I've been pretty happy. It integrates nicely into the browser and phone, free for single user on multiple devices with no password sharing (the family version isn't too expensive either if you do want sharing).

Only real downside is that it's a bit of a pain copying passwords for anything that is not a website, since in the browser integration if you copy the username and paste it over to another window, it closes the plugin integration and resets the search so you have to search again to get the password. But it's rare enough to not be an issue for me, plus there is a desktop app too (nothing great, but useable).
 
Fama said:
It's a bit of a pain to sync across devices though, you can do it with Google Drive or something but I wouldn't recommend it.

I've switched over to Bitwarden from Keepass and Kee, and I've been pretty happy. It integrates nicely into the browser and phone, free for single user on multiple devices with no password sharing (the family version isn't too expensive either if you do want sharing).

Only real downside is that it's a bit of a pain copying passwords for anything that is not a website, since in the browser integration if you copy the username and paste it over to another window, it closes the plugin integration and resets the search so you have to search again to get the password. But it's rare enough to not be an issue for me, plus there is a desktop app too (nothing great, but useable).
Click to expand...
I'm going to use the encrypted spreadsheet with password approach. I can always generate a csv, comma separated values, file from that which can be imported into the browser. I'll keep the spreadsheet backed up on a thumb drive as well as my 4TB drive which is only turned on for backup and restore. I keep all my important documents backed up in this way as well.

I finally figured out what happened. Mozilla made the assumption that no one would have the loader on a hard drive and chose to set that program to install the latest version without checking the current hardware/software on the assumption that it would have just been downloaded after checking the hardware/software for which version to download. The fallacy with this logic is that if your browser is down you can't download the latest version. This is WHY I had a copy on my hard drive. It also circumvents the method used by most IT departments with a large user base.

It installed the version that was for W10 and W11, THEN it checked the current hardware/software. Then IT decided to downgrade to the previous version which then auto-magically *protected me* by deleting my passwords.

As a professional programmer that charged $125 an hour 13 years ago I can tell you this is the work of a drug addled idiot. This is programming 101, MAKE YOUR SYSTEMS IDIOT PROOF. Assume the worst and make sure you prevent it. Really, this is the stuff I prevented my entire career starting in 1978. Nothing new tech about version control.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top