What happened to my Firefox?!

[Tiny123]

I installed the updates that my computer wanted me to install and this morning when I log on and go to "web browser" like I normally do to open Firefox I got all this Yahoo BS on it, changed my theme, put a stupid little tool bar on there, and changed my homepage...so I'm thinking great I have to change all that back, so I try, turns out my themes are gone, all my add-ons are gone, all my bookmarks are gone, and then I noticed the address in the address bar. Even though I was on the Yahoo front page there was the word Dell in the address bar.

So I'm thinking this has to do with the updates I ran last night...is there anyway to recover my bookmarks? Is there a way to turn off updates that delete my stuff? Or is this something that happens when you buy a computer rather than building one like I normally do?

I'm really lost here, did I do something wrong?

[oz]

If you'd like to start fresh, you can try this:

close firefox
rename the current ~/.mozilla folder to something like .mozillaOLD
restart firefox so that the config folders can rebuild themselves
reclaim any bookmarks from the OLD folder before deleting it
you'll have to reinstall any add-ons that you want/need

I'm not sure of any method that exists for blocking any updates that might break something because I think that could happen with pretty much any update/upgrade.

Hope this works for you.

[Tiny123]

Is that basically a way to back things up incase it happens again?

[oz]

Yes, you can make incremental backups, or you can backup entire partitions if you wish. I personally use the full partition approach and create images of all my partitions once I get the system setup and tweaked the way I want it. If things should go bad, it's a 3 or 4 minute chore to restore the partition image(s) to the hard disk.

Check here for some possible backup/recovery options. If you should find an app that you want to try, it's best to install it with your default package tool if possible, rather than installing from source.

[Tiny123]

OK thanks! I'll do that.