Today I wrote a batch file to back up my Firefox settings. Yesterday, I lost all of my Firefox settings because, like an idiot, I was messing with the application data files without backing them up first. So after re-installing all of my favorite extensions and theme, I decided it was something I never wanted to have happen again. I researched to death a way to transfer this stuff from my laptop (WIN XP) to where the data was lost (WIN 2000), but after a long time I realized that the following file was causing problems:
C:\Documents and Settings\profile\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
random.default\chrome\overlayinfo\browser\content\overlays.rdf
and since I couldn’t figure out a way around it, I gave up. If you know how to deal with it, or why that file causes me problems, I’d love to hear about it.

I also spent a while on google trying to find any type of backup/restore extensions or programs. I did find one called MozBackup, but not only are they not developing it anymore, it didn’t work.

In my research I realized that you can just copy the firefox directory, and use it for backup. So I created a directory called c:\documents and settings\profile\my documents\FFBackup\firefox\ and a batch script called backupFF.bat in my C:/ root directory with the following code:

xcopy /E /Y “c:\documents and settings\profile\application data\mozilla\firefox” “c:\documents and settings\profile\my documents\FFBackup\firefox\”

exit

Then I went to control panel > shceduled tasks and created a new schedule to run my bat file once a week. As far as I can tell, problem solved.