FF3 lost bookmarks, password -> new profile: How get the passwords?

I had installed VMware Server 2 on my host (Ubuntu 8.04). It is to handle inside Firefox. After rebooting my host all Virtual Machines are shown as "Unkmown (Inacceptable)". I tried a lot to find the reason, one of these action was to start firefox as root (I know, you should not!). After that I started Firefox as normal user, but now all bookmarks were lost, all passwords were away. I tried something to find the reason and found a new profile. Maybe it was created, when I started firefox as root.
At the end I created a new profile, imported the bookmarks. I tried to import the passwords, too: I copied the signons.txt of the old profile and pasted to the new profile. But there are no passwords!
How can I get back my passwords in a way I can use in my new profile?
Thanks for your answers
Greetings from Vienna, Austria ;-)
Zwieferl

PS: While I was looking for the reason of misfunction of vmware server 2 the extension " Minimap Sidebar" installed an update. Maybe it happens when I started FF as root, but I cannot remember.