I just installed the latest version of k-meleon and to my horror had to set all my preferences again.

Could you please make it that new installs KEEP our existing preferences.

Yikes, my last session (all tabs) was erased too, along with all my site passwords. Yikes.

I presume that a new profile has been created,
either in the K-Meleon main folder, or in the
central application directory , which is mostly in
C:/Documents..../yourusername/Applications/K-Meleon
or similar, and that your old profile from before
is still there, and you can copy back your preferences,
bookmarks etc.
If you can't find your old profile, start a
search with the shortcut "windowskey + f" for all
folders named "profiles". The windowskey is the
button with the windows flag between Ctrl and Alt.
Press it together with "f" to open a systemwide search box
to search for files and folders.
Note: your passwords are in the encrypted file, ending
with ".s", in your old profile.

Fred