I have just made a clean install of Windows 11. Prior to this, I copied my User Data over to my external drive. Upon pasting this folder over the newly installed User Data with my fresh install of Brave, nothing has changed inside of my browser, no settings imported.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
The Brave version of my old install is the same as the current version, Version 1.78.94 Chromium: 136.0.7103.60 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Run through the procedure, after a Restart into Safe Mode.
In Safe Mode, install Brave Browser. Run Brave Browser with minimum Settings adjustments. Then Exit / Quit Brave Browser.
Next, with Brave Browser NOT running, you have two options:
A) REPLACE (DO NOT “paste over”) the “Default” folder at:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default. . . with the “Default” folder that you saved in your old “User Data” folder.
B) REPLACE (DO NOT “paste over”) the “User Data” folder at:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data. . . with your old “User Data” folder.
Exit / Quit everything and Restart the computer.
The following steps, are intended to get the Windows Registry’s attention (in a manner of speaking aka my theory of the moment) and get Brave Browser’s attention, as well . . .
Use the following, for the Command Prompt command line entry:
"C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe" --user-data-dir="C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data" --profile-directory="C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default"Your Windows OS PC’s (administrative level) user account name goes here: [UserName] in two locations within that command. And, assuming that the Brave Browser installation is “system level” ← the brave.exe file is located as you see it in the path, of that command.
You can verify the path of installation and the Profile path, by entering brave://version in a Brave Browser New Window, and scrolling down to:
Results?