Strange Problems with Firefox - Bookmarks deleted. Virus? Spyware?

[questorps7]

I use a Mac at work and have been having some strange problems with Firefox lately. It began when one of my bookmarks stopped working. It would suddenly redirect to a different site or to another site that I had visited that day. I tried deleting it and re-bookmarking the page from scratch, but that didn't work.

Now, all my bookmarks are missing from the bookmark sidebar, though they still appear in the bookmark pull down menu — but NONE of them work.

I tried copying my bookmarks backup folder as well as my profile folder from ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/ and uninstalling the program, but this did not work either. Strangely enough, the "Firefox" folder does not appear every time I open "Application Support" folder.

I found this thread here and tried some of the tips, but that didn't solve the problem:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/504752/

So, pretty much I'm at the end of my options. If anyone could offer some help I'd appreciate it. I'm not too knowledgeable on a Mac, but can follow directions well if they're laid out step by step. Here's some other pertinent data:

Mac OS X 10.4.11
Firefox 3.0.8

Additional information:

A co-worker found the following forum that accurately describes the problem here as well:

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-vie...cale=en-US&comments_parentId=313800&forumId=1

 

[questorps7]

Possible Solution

After doing some more research today, I found a solution that seems to have solved the problem (at least for now). If you find Firefox is replacing your bookmarks with ads or other links, take the following steps:

1.) Go to ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/random characters.default

2.) Find and open "bookmarks.html" Be sure to select the file without any numbers after it (i.e. "bookmarks-72.html"). This should be a current (or fairly current) list of your bookmarks. Copy this file to a safe place.

3.) Find any files named "places.sqlite" including "places.sqlite-journal" and "places.sqlite.corrupt" Delete these files.

4.) Open the folder "bookmarkbackups" located at ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/random characters.default/bookmarkbackups. Delete all the files inside.

5.) Quit Firefox completely. Empty your trash bin.

6.) Copy "bookmarks.html" back into ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/random characters.default

7.) Restart Firefox. The program will rebuild the "places.sqlite" file and bookmark backup from the "bookmarks.html" file that you replaced there.

Found the article on how to do this here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locked_or_damaged_places.sqlite