You may have history disabled or have your history file locked/protected/rewrite.

Check the following places:

Tools > Options > Privacy tab > Firefox will... (make sure it says remember history or you have custom settings that allow remembering history)

Help > Troubleshooting info... then click the Open Containing Folder button. In the folder, look for a file called places.sqlite (sometimes just called places) and make sure it's not read-only or it doesn't have admin-only permissions.

You may also need to try Firefox reset.

Note that current Firefox versions no longer have the drop marker to open the tab history drop down list.
Use one of these methods to open the tab history list:

• Right click on the Back or Forward button
• Hold down the left mouse button on the enabled Back or Forward button until the list opens

Problems with bookmarks and history not working properly can be caused by a corrupted places.sqlite database file.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Bookmarks_history_and_toolbar_buttons_not_working_-_Firefox
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file

You can try to check and repair the places database with this extension:

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/

Thank you both for the responses! I was chipping away at the mozillazine articles when I had a pop-up to upgrade to FF 15. In the hopes that this would solve my problems, I upgraded, and still don't have the ability to click back on the back buttons, or via the keyboard short-cuts. FWIW, my bookmarks and history files appear to be fine, as I've been using them to deal with the issue at the moment, as well as just opening links in another tab in case I do have to go "back".

I'll keep trying, saving the FF reset for last and will let you know - thanks again for your help...

Also tried the places maintenance add-on and it took no exception to what I have. This is the report it generated, maybe this can help:

> Integrity check
+ The database is sane
> Coherence check
+ The database is coherent
> Orphans expiration
+ Database cleaned up
> Vacuum
Initial database size is 10240 KiB
+ The database has been vacuumed
Final database size is 10240 KiB
> Statistics
Database size is 10240 KiB
user_version is 21
page_size is 4096
cache_size is 1024
journal_mode is wal
synchronous is 1
History can store a maximum of 26577 unique pages
Table moz_bookmarks has 946 records
Table moz_bookmarks_roots has 5 records
Table moz_keywords has 7 records
Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records
Table moz_favicons has 170 records
Table moz_annos has 973 records
Table moz_anno_attributes has 10 records
Table moz_items_annos has 132 records
Table moz_places has 3127 records
Table moz_historyvisits has 2991 records
Table moz_inputhistory has 16 records
Table moz_hosts has 833 records
Table sqlite_stat1 has 15 records
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_roots_1
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_favicons_1
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1
Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1
Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex
Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex
Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex
Index moz_places_faviconindex
Index moz_places_hostindex
Index moz_places_visitcount
Index moz_places_frecencyindex
Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex
Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex
Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex
Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex
Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex
Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex
Index moz_places_url_uniqueindex
Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex
Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex
Index moz_favicons_guid_uniqueindex

I did as mentioned in the previous posts and struck out. So I went with doing a reset, and viola! It's fixed! Only thing I would mention is to backup your bookmarks and add-ons. My bookmarks came through the back up process but not the add-ons, and I had to go through the process of picking them out, adding and making sure I could go "back", in the hopes I could find one of the add-ons being the culprit.

But none of the add-ons gave me problems, so I don't know what the bug was. But I'm good to go, so thanks again for the help!

Note that a "Reset" creates a new profile and tries to import some settings from the old profile leaving the old profile intact, including the cache folder (about:cache) that can take up to 1 GB.

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

Firefox 15+ versions will move the old profile folder to an "Old Firefox Data-##" folder on the Desktop that gets a number appended if you use reset more than once, so you can no longer use the profile manager to revert to the old profile.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Firefox