“Reseting” Adblock Plus

There may be a point where you want to ‘reset’ AdBlock Plus back to ‘factory defaults’. This can be the case where you are blocking something you don’t want to and can not figure out how to unblock it or AdBlock Plus is mis-behaving (can happen to any add-on). So, how do you reset AdBlock Plus, is it just a matter of uninstalling the add-on then re installing? Not quite, there ara a couple steps in between uninstalling and re-installing AdBlock Plus. Here is what you need to do to ‘reset’ AdBlock Plus:

  • From the Add-ons Manager (Firefox Menu > Add-ons or Tools > Add-ons) click on AdBlock Plus then click Remove
  • Access your profile folder via Help > Troubleshooting Information then in the new tab click the Show Folder button.
  • Locate and DELETE the folder adblockplus
  • Back in Firefox open a new tab and in the address bar type about:config and press enter.
  • If needed, click the I’ll be careful, I promise button. In the filter field type extensions.adblockplus You will end up with a few entries such as those below. For each of these entries, right-click on the entry and select Reset.
    • extensions.adblockplus.savestats;false
    • extensions.adblockplus.frameobjects;false
    • extensions.adblockplus.fastcollapse;true
    • extensions.adblockplus.blockableItemsSize;{“width”:”200″,”height”:”602″}
  • Close the about:config and Troubleshooting Information tabs
  • Download and re-install AdBlock Plus

Upon install (which no longer requires a restart) your AdBlock Plus will be like it was the first time it was installed.

8 Comments on “Reseting” Adblock Plus

  1. Thanks for the step-by-step. I still can’t figure out how to block specific video ads without causing the entire video to be “blacked out.” Any suggestions?

  2. I CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO BLACK OUT THE ADS FROM ALL MY STATIONS THAT I WATCH, I FIGURED OUT SOMEHOW TO BLOCK THE ADS FROM ABC BUT I WATCH CBS, NBC, FOX AND CW AND THE ADS ARE STILL COMING THROUGH CAN YOU HELP ME FIGURE THIS OUT.

    • I don’t have an exact answer to that question, but I think googling “adblock NBC”, etc. should help. Also try “adblock NBC webplayer”. In my experience video ads are the hardest to block.
      Oh, and some unsolicited advice: ALL CAPS reads like shouting to most people, and may even make them ignore what you wrote. So try not to, especially when you’re asking for help.

  3. Ashes9872000 | February 19, 2013 at 6:54 AM |

    Hi – I followed all these steps up to resetting the extension entries. When typing in extensions.adblockplus, 36 entries came up. However when I right click the “reset” option is grayed out and unclick-able on every one of them. Any idea why that might be? Thanks!

    • There should only be a few left after you have removed AdBlock Plus (which needs to be done prior to going into about:config). So it sounds like ABP did not get fully removed.

  4. awesome…thank you so much

  5. way too involved, the adblock REMOVE option should absolutely remove all traces. This should be a “STANDARD” set by Firefox, remove program should mean REMOVE!

  6. I got the list under ‘extensions.adblockplus’ but when I right clicked them, reset was greyed out and so I couldn’t reset them

Comments are closed.