No I have not, but others use 7 and report having no issue.

However, today, things were working better than yesterday, I had direct access to gmail without cookie deletion. This has happened before, sometimes the cookie was OK, other times not, so I am not sure. Last night the cookie problem was still present.

What was done:

Backed up profile and bookmarks Deleted Firefox Ran disk cleanup twice (there was very little to clean up, a couple hundred Mb) Re-installed Firefox (it knew there was a prior install, so possibly did not do everything?) During the install firefox announced it was doing a refresh, and indeed, some things were no longer showing on the "toolbar" that were there before. Restarted The cookie problem was still present, and I had again to delete the google cookie.

However, this morning, after another restart, there was no problem. As mentioned, this has happened before, the problem seemed to disappear, and then re-occurred in a day or so. I usually only shut off and restart once per day.

Thank you for the advice. We will see if the issue does re-occur.

Yes, the very same issue IS back. Same as before. I had not even shut down the computer, but I HAD closed Firefox. I get the same "cookie problem" message as before.

So, no solution.

Yes, win 8.1 has not shown the problem, but that is a sample of one, on a tablet computer that has only minimal programs on it, and is not used for anything complex. I cannot really prove anything from that, there are Win7 computers without the problem also.

With "general" regard to reporting this on the Windows/Microsoft forum, I expect the Microsoft solution is to use Internet Explorer, or update to Win 10, because they do not support any other browsers, have nothing to do with Google, and will be shutting off Win 7 support soon. I do not expect much from a report there. I suppose I COULD do it, if I get some extra time to spend on that.

Should not bother with Microsoft Forum Win 7

• https://www.sevenforums.com/
• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/f/167/windows-7/

Win 8

• https://www.eightforums.com/
• https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/f/209/windows-8-and-windows-81/

Nothing on Bleeping Computer.

I will have to try "sevenforums". I did not expect much, as the problem seems to point away from windows, and points at Firefox, google, or a combination of them.

There would be no response from anything at google.... even microsoft would be more responsive. And the options here at FF seem limited.

Now I wonder if I could do better just going back to plain original 57? It was an update that "broke" google, after all, the earlier version may work.

Is there any reason why the profile etc on 57.0.4 would be non-compatible with 57.0.2?

If clearing cookies didn't help then It is possible that the cookies.sqlite file in the Firefox profile folder that stores the cookies got corrupted.

• rename/remove cookies.sqlite (cookies.sqlite.old) and if present delete cookies.sqlite-shm and cookies.sqlite-wal in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed in case cookies.sqlite got corrupted.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
  Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

As I said, clearing the google cookie DOES FIX IT FOR THAT SESSION.

And, NO other cookie is affected it is ONLY the google cookie that is a problem. I have many things, dozens, that use cookies, and all of them are fine.

The problem is not with cookies in general, but SPECIFICALLY with the way the google cookie gets stored. THAT cookie must get corrupted, but NO OTHER one does. And the google cookie apparently gets corrupted every single time it is stored.

So I do not want to clear out cookies, and then have to do everything over again, unless it is known that the problem WILL be fixed by doing that. First, there seems to be no problem with any other cookie, they get stored, retrieved, etc, without incident. Only the one cookie is bad. Makes no sense to delete hundreds of good ones and have to find passwords etc for all sorts of sites, in case "maybe", "possibly", it "might" fix the one bad cookie.

I have been there before. I was already told to do the "5 minute process" of deleting firefox and re-installing to fix this problem. Told to on a "do this or we will go away and refuse to help" basis. So I did that. It took an hour, and nothing changed.

So you can forgive me if I need to have more assurance that doing lots of work will have an actual positive result, before I get excited about jumping through all the hoops.

Well, folks, it looks like it is DEFINITELY a FireFox problem.

I have found at least one or two other people who had the same thing happen at the time of the update to 57.0.3, so I am REALLY doubting that I did some stupid user mistake to foul it up. (I already knew I did not, but that cuts no ice with on-line advice, I know).

SO... What is Mozilla going to do about it?

Incidentally, the problem is changing... it originally just never came up correctly.

Now, when I START UP the computer, it is fine, my links are there, they work, and I do not have to log-in.

BUT, if I ever close firefox, and later open it again to access gmail, I have to go through the whole rigamarole of clearing the google cookie, and logging in again. If I do not do that, I just get the message telling me that I have to turn cookies "on". (Of course they ARE "on" already)

jstanley said

Now, when I START UP the computer, it is fine, my links are there, they work, and I do not have to log-in.

BUT, if I ever close firefox, and later open it again to access gmail, I have to go through the whole rigamarole of clearing the google cookie, and logging in again. If I do not do that, I just get the message telling me that I have to turn cookies "on". (Of course they ARE "on" already)

That's really strange. Usually people report more data loss problems after a system startup, not fewer.

In the shut down scenario, do you exit Firefox yourself or rely on Windows to send "close window" commands to Firefox and other running applications?

Do you usually restore your previous Firefox session before visiting Gmail, either automatically through the startup setting on the Options page or using the menu command to Restore Previous Session?

When Gmail doesn't recognized that you're logged in, what about other Google sites/applications such as Search or YouTube, do those sites recognize you as logged in?

In reverse order:

Search does not have the usual recent suggestions when there is an issue, Youtube I do not sign into, so no idea there. Everything is restored to normal when the cookie is cleared.

I have always started Firefox with the icon on the taskbar, and go from there to gmail if I need to look at it. Firefox is the default browser anyway.

If I exit firefox, I close it manually. I normally close everything before shutting down the computer. In general, I will have closed firefox sufficiently before shutdown that it will have closed itself, and should not be still active. I have observed that all versions of FF have tended to take a minute or so to close, pre-Quantum as well as Quantum..

As mentioned, I found at least one or two others who report the same thing, again all associated with the time at which FF 57.0.3 was first loaded as an upgrade on their systems. I uninstalled and re-installed FF latest version, 57.0.4, and there was no effect, no observable improvement from that.

And, of course, this morning when I started up, FF did NOT come up with the links correct.

No idea why, it has been good for several days previously, and nothing different was done. I guess it just had to prove me wrong.

But, later, when I needed to restart the computer for unrelated reasons, it came up working fine after the restart.

All the computers are updating to FF 58 now, we wll see if that makes any difference.

So far FF58 is no different. Same problem, except that it CONSISTENTLY does not work right when started up.

57.0.4 did often work right at startup.

I'm trying to think of a convenient way to do a "before and after" comparison of the cookies just before exit and just after startup, but without revisiting Google when starting the next session, since that may change/corrupt the saved cookies. Do you use the setting to restore your previous session tabs at startup, or have any Google tabs pinned?

Nothing pinned that I know of, and as a rule I do not restore. Google is the default search engine, it is the home page.

However, searching for cookies.sqlite shows that there are no less than 5 different versions of the file.

One is a legitimate backup file. one seems to be another backup elsewhere, the other 3 are as follows:

Two differently dated and named files are in users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.

One is in User\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\BCLTMP\firefox\

I am thinking that the older one of those two that are in the same place might need to be deleted.

Examining the cookie file does not seem to be productive-looking. When I looked at the cookie file, it was gibberish, as I expected, and "google" is mentioned all through the file.

UPDATE:

I moved the older file elsewhere, and there was NO change whatever to the problem.

Now I am wondering about the one that is in User\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\BCLTMP\firefox\

While cookies.sqlite is in use, the database engine may create journaling files with additional characters tacked onto cookies.sqlite including as -wal and -shm. So three files in the profile (under Roaming) is not unusual.

A backup file might be created if there was a database format change and the cookies were permanently migrated. A .corrupt file could be created if the database was damaged and had to be recreated from scratch.

I don't know why there would be a cookies.sqlite database in the Windows Temp folder. ??

Anyway, my thought was that there must be some change to the cookie data between exit and next startup. The .sqlite format requires tools to extract and the challenge is how best to do that. Or perhaps it's not productive, but if the cookies are the same when they are working and when they are not working, that would rule out something going wrong during the interim.

OK. I moved the older file, no change.

I then got rid of the one in temp, also no change.

When I moved the other one, Firefox could not load my profile, so I assume that is the one actually in use.

I can try getting the cookies.sqlite from the older file, and putting it in the current profile, which may or may not do anything, as I am not sure it was from before the problem. I rather suspect it was not.

One of the two profile directories under profiles has no cookie file, the other does have one.

wlous5xd.default-1515818668654 does.

u43zn6e5.default does not.

Both have the same date and nearly the same time.

When I stuck a cookie file in the one that had none, it did not appear to make a difference.

This kind of name indicates the profile was created during a Refresh (unless you chose the number yourself):

wlous5xd.default-1515818668654

It's weird that you have a second profile with files nearly as up-to-date.

Do you have a profile name coded into your Firefox shortcut? You can check the command line as follows:

First, open the shortcut:

• Desktop shortcut: right-click the icon, choose Properties
• Pinned taskbar icon: right-click the icon, right-click Mozilla Firefox, choose Properties

Windows normally will select the Shortcut tab. If not, go ahead and click the Shortcut tab.

You'll see the Target highlighted. On Windows, that usually is no more and no less than the following (depending on 32-bit/64-bit):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

If anything follows after that, such as:

-P "default"

Then the shortcut will launch a specific profile. If it uses -no-remote as well, that creates the risk that launching a link or .url type shortcut could launch a separate instance of Firefox in your default profile, creating a confusing situation where different windows have different cookies files.

But since you haven't noticed a high level of odd things happening, that's probably not an issue.

The program was told NOT to do a refresh when it was installed after deleting FF, as I was forcefully instructed to do earlier. But it DID do a refresh, despite selecting the "do not refresh" option.

So that would be why it is a name that indicates a refresh.

I ended up copying the .sqlite, plus the SHM and the other one from the older version into the current "wlous...... " file.

Of course I had to re-log-in to everything in the world, but I kind of expected that would happen. There are probably some more sites left that I forgot about, but the recent searches etc seem so far to be still good.

That has at least temporarily caused FF to come up right twice in a row.

So pending any more issues, which it is not certain if they will or will not occur, I am putting it down to a corrupted cookies.sqlite file, which was evidently caused by the FF57.0.3 update, and has persisted ever since.

I am not yet marking anything solved, though, it has looked good as gold before and still reverted to the bad side.

Update: The google cookie is still working, so it is getting more likely that it really is fixed.

The confusing issue here is that it ONLY messed up the google cookie. If anything else had appeared to have a problem, I would have understood that it was a general corrupted cookies issue directly. I still am not quite sure why the issue persisted despite actually deleting the cookie dozens of times. It must have existed out in the google system somewhere, and have been reloaded in its corrupted form after each deletion.