Installing Firefox (same version) two times on the same PC?

Question

I have a big problem with Firefox. It's terribly slow and I was not able to figure out the problem (I disabled a lot of plugins, changed a lot of settings, but with no success).

Now I want to test a "fresh installation". Therefore my question. Is it possible to install Firefox (with more or less the same version) a second time onto my PC? What do I have to take care of? (I do not want to lose any Data of my current Firefox installation)...

Important: They do NOT have be be able to RUN in parallel (only be installed in parallel).

Thank you very much for your advice! Jens

Answer 1

This article may serve useful http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-run-multiple-versions-of-the-same-program-on-your-pc/

I have not tried it myself.

Also, if the option "Run As" does not show up when you right click on the application. Try "Shift + Right Click"

Answer 2

Installing it again will not help as it will still use the same profile. Instead, try creating a new profile as documented here.

Do not delete your existing (default) profile or you will lose your data.

Alternatively, you may want to start your profile in Safe mode, which will disable all your extensions and plugins. You can then determine if the slowness persists. If it does, then it must be one of your extensions/plugins, so you can simply try disabling a few at a time until you find the responsible one.

If you do want to go ahead and install it a second time, that should be perfectly possible, but it is very unlikely to make any difference.

Answer 3

While you could install the second time into a different folder than the default, you'd have problems with any registry settings that Firefox uses. The second install would change all of these to the new location so you wouldn't be able to run the first installation any more.

There might be a way to install Firefox so that it doesn't affect the registry, but the only information I've found on Portable Firefox just states that it won't leave any personal information on the computer, not that it doesn't write to the registry.