Good day all, I have had loads of success with Firefox and I would like to share my tweaks and hopefully help someone.

First off, I download the executable from the Firefox website. Then, using WinRAR, extract the contents of the executable to a staging folder.

In that folder, find a file named CONFIG.ini, I open it using Notepad++ and change one line:

Run Mode=Normal

to

Run Mode=Silent

Then, install Firefox by double clicking the SETUP.exe located in the staging folder. This will not require any user intervention as the install mode has now been set to silent.

Once that is done, I run Firefox and make all of my personal settings; start page, download prefs, etc. and close Firefox. Now, I look in "c:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox", find the file named PROFILES.ini and open it with Notepad++, change the "Path=" Value to "Path=Profiles/profile.default". Now, look in the profiles directory and find the "*******.default" folder, rename it to "profile.default"

Here is what this should look like when you are done:

<img src=http://static.flickr.com/98/208286125_c74e785b06.jpg>

Hopefully, the previous paragraph isn't too confusing, what I was doing there was 'forcing' Firefox to use a profile folder that is specifically named, not one that is created randomly by the application.

Now, another suggestion is to run Firefox again and load up all of the Extensions and Search Plugins that you want. Be VERY CAREFUL not to do anything that would be specific to you, such as entering your info into the Google Toolbar Autofill fields, etc. The next paragraph will explain why.

Here are some of my favorite extensions:

<img src=http://static.flickr.com/67/208286126_d331c95cb3.jpg>

Now that you have a clean, default profile setup, let's wrap it up. Using WinRAR, zip up the following:

"c:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles" folder

"c:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.ini" file

Make the zip a self-extracting executable (mine is named PATCH.exe for the purposes of this article), and have it extract to the "c:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox" folder. Additionally, set the options to overwrite without asking, this way it will purge the existing "profiles.ini" file.

Then, I run the simple batch file that contains 2 lines:

SETUP.exe

PATCH.exe

This batch file performs a completely silent install of Firefox that includes all of our tweaks, customizations, extensions and search plugins.

It is possible that I missed one or two things. I apologize if I did, please post a reply with any questions or suggestions.

Ummm, sorry all, I should have posted this in Application Installs.

sounds good, i personally use Silence of the Foxes. although, my current silent installation is 1.5.0.4, i let it auto-update too 1.5.0.6.. I'll try your method and see which one i like more

This works beautifully with 1.5.0.6 and I will adapt this for our unattended install - thanks!

I posted a more simple way here, but it has been removed? At least the moderator could say why, I only posted it becauseit can be simpler than what the first post says + pdmcmahon is open to suggestions.

Well at least people should now: editing CONFIG.ini is not necessary, simply use firefoxsetup.exe -ms and you also trigger the silent install.

Also there is an easier way to create your own default profile, using the -profile defaults\profile switch.

Edited August 14, 200620 yr by ZileXa