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Firefox browser hijacked by Speedbit Search

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  • Last reply by nick8000

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I recently refreshed Firefox browser & found it had been taken over by Speedbit Search. When I have been using Google and then pressed the Home button to return to the Firefox homepage this was when I found Speedbit Search homepage. So I have been unable to access my Firefox bookmarks, passwords, history. I refreshed again and got back the Firefox homepage without the bookmarks and saved passwords, but I think Speedbit is still on the computer. Thank you, nick8000

I recently refreshed Firefox browser & found it had been taken over by Speedbit Search. When I have been using Google and then pressed the Home button to return to the Firefox homepage this was when I found Speedbit Search homepage. So I have been unable to access my Firefox bookmarks, passwords, history. I refreshed again and got back the Firefox homepage without the bookmarks and saved passwords, but I think Speedbit is still on the computer. Thank you, nick8000

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nick8000 said

Before I go ahead and restore bookmarks, I want the bookmarks that I had created on & up to 26 August 2016 before I had Refreshed Firefox and found Speedbit Search.

They should be in the backup file if it was created on or after that date. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell what's in there without restoring because the file is compressed.

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Dear jscher2000,

I carried out the Restore Procedure. Restore Menu - click ' Choose File '. Opened Old Firefox Data folder. Found ' bookmarksbackup ' folder. Inside the ' most recently dated file '. Chose this file to try for a restoration. Closed the Library window. Nothing happened, was I doing anything wrong.

Regards. nick8000

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Open the Old Firefox folder and Copy the file. Now go to your current profile, and Paste the file in, overwriting the current file.

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Hi nick8000, did you get any error messages?

In the file name, the number of bookmarks should be indicated. Does it seem large enough to be the correct backup? This appears after the date portion of the name -- in this example, 999 bookmarks:

bookmarks-2016-09-15_999_gibberish==.jsonlz4

Note: Very large files can take a long time to restore and show unresponsive script dialogs. If you see those, click Continue until the process completes.

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Dead FredMcD

Thank you for your ' steps. I have been on Google to check how to do it.

Regards, nick8000

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Dear jscher2000,

I did not receive any error messages because I received nothing after closing the Library window. There did seem to be some hard disk activity after closing the Library window.

Regards. nick8000

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Hi nick8000, how many bookmarks were in the backup (coded into the file name)? Is there a larger one from an earlier date in case the latest was incomplete?

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Dear jscher2000,

bookmarks-2016-08-26_707 bookmarks-2016-08-26_19992

Regards. nick8000

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OMG, 19,992 bookmarks is a huge number. Maybe your bookmarks got severely corrupted (duplicated over and over)? On the other hand, does 707 sound more likely?

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Dear jscher2000

I am afraid it is 19,992 bookmarks, I would say 99% of them came from Chrome when I imported them into Firefox and it was over an hour before the importing was complete.

Regard. nick8000

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You may have ended up with duplicate bookmarks.

Do you still have the Chrome files? Tonight, import the Chrome files.

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Dear FredMcD,

I have already imported the Chrome bookmarks when I changed from Chrome to Firefox and it took over an hour to be done.

Regards. nick8000

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FredMcD said

Tonight, import the Chrome files.

I meant when you go to bed.

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nick8000 said,

I have imported the Chrome bookmarks.

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Any problems?

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Dear FredMcD,

I imported the bookmarks from Chrome to Firefox when I changed to Firefox. This happened on March 18 2016 and it took over 2 hours. Twice I tried to re-import the bookmarks from Chrome and on each occasion only 3 bookmark folders were imported. I have Chrome version 49.0.2623.112m and all the bookmark folders are still there. I am still with Windows Vista Home Premium Service Pack 2 32 bit.

Regards. nick8000

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Dear jscher2000,

Please, what does OMG stand for. I tried to restore bookmarks from folder bookmarks-2016-08-26_19992 and it was not successful.

Regards. nick8000

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Hi nick8000, OMG stands for "Oh my God" so that's not specific to your question. When you say the restore was not successful, did Firefox keep reporting that a script was running slowly or did it just give up?

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Dear jscher2000,

You made me laugh. I think it probably gave up because of the weight of bookmarks. I did the run overnight. When I came to look next morning it was just a blank.

Regards. nick8000

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Hi nick8000, I'm not sure what to suggest at this point. Possibly a more powerful computer could restore your bookmarks file, but... how would that help you on your computer? Perhaps if it was restored on another computer and then exported to the HTML format, which involves less data, your Firefox would be able to import the HTML-format file. I don't know.

I found a tool which decompresses Firefox's .jsonlz files back to .json files. When I tested it with my recent backup, the file size increased from 877 KB to 2,593 KB (so I can see why they compress it). That probably wouldn't make it easier to restore, but would offer the option of extracting the data to a list if needed. Unfortunately a far cry from restoring your intact folder structure, etc.

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