Mozilla has been publishing the 64-bit version of the Firefox browser for some time now. Not many people switched to it for first few months out of the fear that it won’t work with different add-ons they use or it will break some of their favorite plugins. But now that it has been thoroughly tested by hundreds of thousands of people across the world, you can make the move and switch to the faster and more efficient 64-bit version of the Firefox browser. Before you make this move you should make a backup of your Firefox profile in case you accidentally do something to remove it or wipe it out.
Note: 64-bit Firefox requires Windows 7 (64-bit) or later running on a 64-bit ready PC. To know if you have 64-bit version of Windows read – how to check if Windows is 32-bit or 64-bit.
Here is how you can safely switch from the 32-bit Firefox to 64-bit Firefox in Windows:
- Download MozBackup from http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/. Launch it and choose to create a backup of your default Mozilla Firefox browser profile. Save the backup somewhere on your PC where you can find it later easily.
- Download the new 64-bit version of Firefox. To do this, visit https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/ and then choose your language, and pick the 64-bit version of Firefox to download. This will download the full setup installer on your PC.
- Open Windows Control Panel, followed by Programs and Features. Then select Mozilla Firefox from the list and click on Uninstall. This will remove your old Firefox web browser from your Windows PC.
- Install the 64-bit Firefox using the setup installer that you downloaded earlier in step 3 above.
- Upon launching the newly installed Firefox, it should load your old Firefox profile without any problem. But if you face any problems, you can restore various settings from the backup that you created using MozBackup in step 1 above.
Conclusion: Switching from the 32-bit Firefox to 64-bit Firefox is very easy, but you can make the process safer by creating a backup of all of your settings first. Creating a backup makes sure that you can always switch back to the 32-bit version of Firefox, if you are not satisfied with the 64-bit version.