I need to reformat my machine but I have so many user/passwords stored in FF2 that I just keep putting it off. Yes I know about backing up the entire profile and restoring it. But for some reason my profile has many issues and I want to start fresh with that as well.
Are the username and passwords stored in a text file or is there some way to export them and import after I reformat?
There is an firebox add-on called Password Exporter. It can export to XML or CSV files that can be imported in another browser or computer.
Alas, this won't solve the re-importing problem, but check out http://wejn.org/stuff/moz-export.html
They have a single html page with a small javascript section that exports your passwords. Save the html to your desktop, read through to make sure it's not evil, open the page in FF, save the results.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I'm not sure I'd trust a password-exporting extension...
You can use the Foxmarks plugin. This exports to XML or CSV format. I used it a week ago and it works really fine.
I've had luck just copying signons2.txt and key3.db over from one profile to another. See also the documentation on MozillaZine.