Creating a New Profile is often used to debug problems as an adjunct to Starting in Safe Mode.  By testing with another profile you do not involve your current use of Firefox.
Profile folder contains user's personal information such as bookmarks, extensions, and user preferences in a unique profile.  The first time you start Firefox, it will automatically create a default profile; additional profiles can be created using the Profile Manager.

Creating a New Profile

Location: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/newprofile.htm
Home page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm
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Testing in Safe Mode

Starting in Safe Mode starts Firefox without the use of Extensions and is used for various reason similar to

From the Windows Start, Run,
    firefox.exe -s

Creating a New Profile

To check if a specific extension is solely responsible for a problem after finding that Firefox works only in Safe Mode, you might create a clean new profile and install the one extension in it.  To create the new profile:

By creating new profile you are not touching your original profile at all.

If you are on Windows go to System Start, Run,
    firefox.exe -p
choose create a new profile giving it a short name.

For more information or if you are not on Windows see

Command line arguments - MozillaZine Knowledge Base http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments

More information on profiles on my Firefox Customizations page.

To indentify your profile folder in the new profile you can type about:cache on the location bar, dropping the cache folder off the end is your profile folder. I would create a key word shortcut for that immediately, once you start playing with things the cache could be moved to another folder so you won't see that method shown at Mozilla -- I sure wish Firefox had a builtin means for a user locate their profile without scripts or extensions

Multiple Profiles (#multi)

It is not necessary to use another drive or to use Firefox Portable on a USB stick, you can test with multiple profiles easily on your main system.  Rather than disabling a lot of extensions you might want to make up another profile to test a specific extension with no interference from previous use of that extension or any other extension, so it will be just firefox and one extension almost like safe mode.

More profile information in

Testing with Safe Mode and New Profiles (#safemode)

Some specific tests to help isolate a Firefox problem before asking for assistance or reporting a bug to a developer.  To speed up testing I create some system shortcuts and have them available in the Windows Launch Pad instead of having to start them from Start, Run.  See Creating keyword shortcuts for your profile and chrome directories .
  1. If you suspect a specific extension, disable it (Tools, Add-ons, disable), and restart and test Firefox.  Some particularly Problematic extensions listed at MozillaZine Knowledge Base.
  2. Start FF in safe mode with old profile ( to check whether add-ons are causing this problem )
  3. Create a test profile and check ( to check whether this problem is caused by any external program )
  4. Move content of plugins folder elsewhere (or rename the folder), start FF in normal mode with old profile ( to check whether plugins are creating any problem)
  5. Running different versions of Firefox at the same time, Some advanced users like to be able to run two or more different versions of Firefox at the same time.  To achieve this, the best approach is to have a different Firefox profile for each version of Firefox you want to run.

Bookmarklets;  There are a lot of links on this page.  The following BookMarklets (Favelets) will distinguish between internal or external links.  First click on "highlight links",  and then on "int/ext links".  Your browser's Reset button (F5) will reload the original unmodified web page. 
This page was introduced on December 27, 2006. 
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