Firefox not Saving Cookies

Firefox 3 often fails to save cookies which means every time you have to enter login and passwords for sites, even when you have saved the login/password. This happens because of unclean shutdown of your computer or firefox resulting in corrupted cookies file.

If you are having the same problem and Firefox 3 (or any other version of firefox) is not able to save login/passwords due to cookies problem, do the following -

1. Go to Application Data Folder. on Windows Vista or on Windows XP, type %AppData% and click enter. On XP, it will open the folder Application Data. From their, open Mozilla\firefox folder. Normally on XP, the path will be C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data and on Vista it is C:\Users\your name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox.

2. Once you read the Firefox folder, open Profiles folder. Most likely you will be only having one profile named xxxxxxxx.default where xxxxxxxxx is some 8 characters. If you have more then one folder, you can do the next step for both profiles, though start from .default one and see of it fixes the problem

3. After opening the folder, look for cookies.sqlite file and delete it (you can copy it first on some other folder as a backup). You won’t be able to delete it if firefox is running so first you have to close firefox.

4. Restart firefox, and now firefox will be able to save all cookies and remember logins and passwords.

If this don’t work, you can also delete cookies.txt file (if it is available). If you have another profile, you can try this on that profile too though most likely you won’t be required to do it.

If you still have some problem, feel free to ask your questions in the comments.

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17 Responses to “Firefox not Saving Cookies”

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1Abhay Khanna on Feb 26, 2009 :

Thanks alot, this works like a charm and i have solved my firefox cookie problem.

One suggestion for the blog though, you can change the font size as its hard to read them. Otherwise the rest of the stuff is really good.
2Ortzinator on Mar 8, 2009 :

Thanks, this worked for me. Too bad I lost all my cookies though.

Abhay, the font size looks pretty standard to me.
3admin on Mar 8, 2009 :

ya, with this method, you will always loose coookies but here is another solution. From now on, use mozbackup.

I regularly take backup with mozbackup and it also backsup cookies. So what I did is, I just replaced my new damaged cookies file with old one. Let me write a post about this to explain it better
4Not Working on Apr 10, 2009 :

Yeah, I’ve tried all of this and it works for the first few shut downs of Firefox and then it’s business as usual with nothing being saved. I’ve uninstalled plugins. Did not work. I’ve uninstalled add-ons. Did not work. I’ve even gone backwards in versions from 3.0.5 to plain old 3. Did not work. I upgraded to the latest version. Did not work. Now, I’m on Firefox 2.0.20 as I type this very complaint–none of this has worked at all.

And when I say “did not work,” I mean the whole cookies.sqlite/change profile/reinstall thing. I’ve done it before each instance of “did not work” and nothing. Nothing works.

It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen that there is a backwards compatible fuck-up crippling an otherwise genius product. I’m running AVG’s email scanning portion in the background, but I was doing that before 3.0.5 and even disabled the same problem occurs.
5juju on May 22, 2009 :

Thanks it worked like a charm! maaaawha!
6Jeanette on Jun 4, 2009 :

Thank you!
I’ve been so annoyed since the last FF-update when no cookies would be saved. This made my day and now it works like a charm again.
Once again, Thank you so much!

Have a great day
7Bill on Jun 5, 2009 :

Oh, Golly — THANKS!

It annoys me greatly when I can’t figure something out, especially when it is a irritating little glitch!
8Alex on Aug 29, 2009 :

Where is the Application Data Folder?
9Alex on Aug 29, 2009 :

Oh, I found it and it worked

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH
10Brian on Oct 11, 2009 :

I’ve tried deleting all cookies and then deleting the cookies.sqlite files several times. I have had no success. It looks like the cookies are getting created but are not being used by Firefox.
11Eazy on Oct 12, 2009 :

I got around the bug by selecting under Options > Privacy > Check Accept Cookies, but leave Accept Third Party Cookies unchecked > then check Clear History When Firefox Closes > Settings > Check only Cache.

I did that AFTER deleting the sqlite file for the billionth time.
12chris on Oct 28, 2009 :

tried this 100x no dice. So annoying. F*** Firefox.
13Usama Ahmed on Dec 26, 2009 :

Worked for me. Thanks.
14Chungyen Chang on Jan 26, 2010 :

I had this problem, and your solution fixed it perfectly. Thanks for posting this. =)
15What Haveyou on Apr 29, 2010 :

Thanks, but the info for the Mac is missing.
16What Eva on Apr 29, 2010 :

Turns out the problem is probably a new default in Firefox.

Under the Privacy tab, I found “always start Firefox in private browsing session” enabled, and this forces you to have all cookies deleted on closing Firefox. I don’t know why this default was changed, but deactivating it and selecting “until they expire” for cookies may help.