How to Reinstall Firefox

Firefox 4 Beta was not as good as I expected, and sometimes it cracked, what was more, I felt it was too slow, though which maybe also caused by some profile settings.
Anyway, I wanted to uninstall the Firefox 4 Beta and then reinstall the latest formal version, below were the five steps for how to reinstall Firefox 3.6.7.

Step one: Backup Firefox Data

Since I doubted that some profile settings made Firefox slow, I didn’t want to backup the whole Profile folder, but just the bookmarks and extensions.
FEBE was an easy and powerful add-on to backup Firefox, besides bookmarks and extensions, it was also available for themes, passwords, cookies and so on, nearly every personal data, but it was not workable for Firefox 4 Beta, even though I had installed the add-on Compatibility Reporter.
So, I had to backup the bookmarks and extensions by hand, and below was how:
1. To Backup Firefox Bookmarks
Although Firefox would automatically backup the Bookmarks in the Profile folder, the process was not in real time, so I had to backup the bookmarks manually.
In case of anything wrong, I exported the bookmarks both as a json file and an html file.
2. To Backup Firefox Extensions
I opened the Profile folder, copied the “extensions” folder, and then pasted it in somewhere else outside the Mozilla directory.
With this backup method, all the personal preferences of those extensions would miss, but luckily I didn’t have many extensions.

Step Two: To Uninstall Firefox 4 Beta

As a matter of fact, I failed to uninstall Firefox 4 Beta from the dashboard directly, so I had to delete the whole installation directory, and then deleted all the Firefox icons.

Step Three: To Reinstall Firefox 3.6.7

I visited the Mozilla website and downloaded the latest formal version Firefox 3.6.7, then installed it.

Step Four: To Import Firefox Bookmarks

Firstly, I restored the bookmarks with the json file, but without favicons, so I deleted all the bookmarks and imported the html file.

Step Five: To Restore Firefox Extensions

I cut the backup extensions folder and rewrite the one in the new Profile folder, then restarted the Firefox, that’s all for how to reinstall Firefox.
As mentioned the before, I had to reset the preferences of some extensions (such as Echofon), but which only took a few minutes, and now the Firefox browser is running faster than before.

Get Free Updates in your Inbox

Follow us on: