Profile missing after using Migration Assistant on Mac OS

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When you use Apple's Migration Assistant to transfer all of your files, programs, and settings to a new Mac computer and you try to open Firefox, users report getting a "Profile Missing" dialog box which says: Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible. This will also occur when attempting to start the Profile Manager.

Note: A "Profile Missing" dialog box can also be displayed for other reasons. See the Profile cannot be loaded article for more information.

This issue can be caused by a problem with permissions in your Home folder. The problem is that most utilities (including Disk Utility, for some reason) don't repair permissions in the Home Folder. To resolve:

A user reports the following solution: [1]

  1. Select the icon of your home folder in the sidebar of a Finder window.
  2. Open the Info window and click the lock icon to authenticate.
  3. In the Sharing & Permissions section, you should have read & write access. If not, make it so.
  4. Select "Apply to enclosed items" from the action (gear icon) menu.

Another user reports this solved the problem: [2]

You need to open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. At the command line prompt enter or paste the following command line:

sudo chown -R `id -un`:`id -gn` ~

Press RETURN. You will be prompted to enter your admin password which will not be echoed.

Once you do that, Firefox should open the profile folder and you should be ready to go.