Please see if this helps

When I close firefox, each time I restart it, I get the "Thank you for upgrading to Fast Dial" page that makes Firefox take about twice as long to load. Also, Fast Dial keeps resetting to the defaults and I lose all my sorting. Is there a way to downgrade back to the prior version?

Both. I go and set the particular layout I want for my bookmarks and when I close/restart FF, all the items layout reverts.

I did as you said for the homepage and am still having the same prob.

Have not tried to make a theme out of my settings yet... will try that next. thanks.

Its almost as if firefox isnt recognizing (or Fast Dial isnt recognizing) that FD has already been run and the upgrade applied. the "you have Upgraded to the latest version" isnt supposed to show every time the browser is started is it?

I mean, I know I upgraded, but FD shouldnt need to remind me of that each time from now on I wouldnt think.

Prolly just a bug.

I do :) Its Shawn. My advanced/updates is already disabled. Used the error console as you suggested and received one error when opening fast dial.

Warning: Use of getBoxObjectFor() is deprecated. Try to use element.getBoundingClientRect() if possible.
Source File: chrome://fastdial/content/fastdial.html
Line: 0

My theme persists, however my row/column settings are reset whenever firefox is shut down. Also my browser is still bringing up the "you have updated" each time I reopen firefox. I uninstalled FD and reinstalled but its still doing the same. I left FD uninstalled for 1 day and it turns out that it was the ONLY add-on that I have ever really missed.

Thank you for helping me to sort this out. I wonder if something is protecting my browser from changes maybe??

@Shawny,
The error message you have is just a warning and I don't think is the cause of the problem.
You can try the following:
- Disable Fast Dial addon, restart Firefox, then add some bookmarks in Bookmarks menu, restart Firefox and check whether the bookmarks you have added are still there.
- If bookmarks aren't still there, then there must be some problem with Firefox bookmarks system.
You can try to backup bookmarks using Bookmark Manager, create a new Firefox profile and restore bookmarks there.
- If bookmarks are still there, you can try to find Firefox profile folder (see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox for info), get files places.sqlite and prefs.js, zip them and send to me to telega(at)gmail.com for analysis.