When you use the reset feature, Firefox creates a new personal settings folder and selectively migrates your bookmarks and various other settings as described in this article: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings. Your current session (i.e., open windows and tabs) are not migrated.

You can bookmark your open tabs in each window as a partial workaround. This option may be available on the Bookmarks menu, or if you right-click (or Mac equivalent) any tab. Note that reloading bookmarked tabs does not carry along with it current session information, so you might need to log back in to some of those sites.

By the way, what issues are you running into that require troubleshooting? Perhaps your symptoms are recognizable and can be fixed without a reset.

ya that would be extremely tedious, we're talking 30+ windows

Firefox 19 slugs down after about 30 minutes, even if Idle. FF 18 didn't have this problem.

It is absolutely unusable after approx 30 minutes

What problem(s) do you currently have with Firefox?

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

• Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe mode start window or otherwise make changes.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

You can also create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.
Then you can always use the Profile Manager to return to the previous profile.

See "Creating a profile":

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from an existing profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox

Session data (open tabs and pinned App tabs) are stored in the sessionstore.js file in the Firefox profile folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/sessionstore.js

I created a new profile, loaded in all my tabs, bookmarks etc. It takes about 30 minutes for the browser to become unusable.

Right now as i type, it takes the text several seconds to catch up with me.

I have 8 i7 cpu cores and 16gig of ram, Firefox is currently using 107% (out of 800%) of the cpu power and 2.8gig of ram

Something is very wrong with v19.x

for what it's worth, here is the troubleshooting info of my new session:

http://pastebin.mozilla.org/2217762

and here's the troubleshoot info from my old session (that refused to post in the OP)

http://pastebin.mozilla.org/2217739

Have you at any point tried disabling Firefox's use of hardware graphics acceleration? Every so often a driver update will wreak havoc on Firefox and fixes for that take time.

Firefox menu > Preferences > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

Unfortunately, you usually need to restart Firefox before this takes effect...

ya I tried that a week ago, it had no effect. Whatever the problem is, it's gradual and takes about 30 minutes to set in.