hi J, most times I tried, the "recently closed windows / tabs" was black but had no history.. i.e. it is empty.. a couple of times it was greyed.. do you know why the process you has not restored the old firefox data?.. I followed the directions correctly I think

Is your Firefox set to restore your previous session automatically at startup? That's the first setting on the Options page. If that is NOT set, then Firefox only remembers the immediately previous session and after closing and re-opening Firefox once, that earlier session is flushed. So it's easy to lose.

Try using the Scrounger on files from your Old Firefox Data folder to see whether they contain your missing tabs.

Another possibility that occurred to me when you said the bookmarkbackups folder in Old Firefox Data was empty is that you could have a third profile folder that has your real data in it. Two places to check:

Does the Profile Manager list your immediately previous profile folder?

To check on that, inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

This page should list all the profiles Firefox is currently aware of. Of course there is the one from after your Refresh and the OldSettings you created earlier in this thread. If you see any other profile that looks promising, scroll down to it and click the Set as default profile button below that profile, then scroll back up and click the Restart normally button. (There are some other buttons, but I think those are still "under construction" so please ignore them.)

Firefox should exit and then start up using the other profile. Is that the right one?

If it's not there...

Do you have unlisted profiles?

Here's how to check whether there are additional profile folders in the standard location in addition to the one you're using. Start by opening your current Firefox profile folder using either:

* "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
* (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
* type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter/Return

In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" button, to launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

In the Windows Explorer address bar, click the capitalized word Profiles to move up one level in the folder hierarchy. More than one folder here by any chance? Do the files in those folders look like they were last updated around the time of the update?

If you've got any promising looking folders, we can discuss next steps to recover use of them, and any bookmark backup or other useful data files they contain.

thanks mate.. the good news is your scrounger worked perfectly and I've been able to recover all my lost tabs (71 to be exact which might be a few too many :) .. they were extracted from the jsonlz4 file which firefox must have saved just before the refresh which, as per your instructions, is now part of the OldSettings profile we created.. so the fact that the pre-refresh profile is the now the current profile but doesn't open in firefox seems strange...

In answer to your other theories, there are no other profiles listed in "about:profiles" other than the post-refresh one and the OldSettings one we created.. and only 2 profiles are listed under "profiles" but the "date modified" times are quite recent and seem to be reflecting the more recent changes I made when copying & pasting old firefox data

Hi kryzchn, can you live with using the document of links? If you want to try another experiment, here's how you would do it. However, this will discard any tabs you currently have open.

To try swapping in an older session history file so Firefox will load it, the standard "manual swap" method is as follows (assuming Firefox is still running):

(1) From inside Firefox, open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch a Windows Explorer window listing the various files and folders in your "OldSettings" profile.

(2) Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit, either:

• "3-bar" menu button > "power" button Exit
• (menu bar) File > Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup -- a file named sessionstore.jsonlz4 should appear in the folder.

(3) Once Firefox has stopped updating things, while viewing the main level of the profile folder, right-click > Rename sessionstore.jsonlz4 to sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4

If you see an older sessionstore.js or sessionstore.bak file, move it somewhere else or delete it.

(4) Copy in the file you want to restore, and rename it with the name appropriate for its format:

• Compressed file such as recovery.jsonlz4 => sessionstore.jsonlz4
• Uncompressed file such as recovery.js => sessionstore.js

(5) Start Firefox and it should read the swapped in sessionstore file and restore whatever was in the substitute file; if you do not have Firefox set to restore your previous windows and tabs automatically, use History > Restore Previous Session

Any luck?

hi j.. (sorry about the delayed response - i'm in Australia).. when you say, "can you live with using the document of links?", if you mean living with the '3rd party' list of links your scrounger recovered as opposed to a rich history in the actual profile, yes I can.. although, I would like to solve the mystery of why the initial recovery process hasn't worked.

also, could you please explain step 4 in a bit more detail?.. I found sessionstore.jsonzl4 which I renamed to sessionstoreOLD.jsonzl4, but I don't where to copy and/or paste the previous.jsonlz4 file which contains all 71 lost tabs

ok I think I worked it out and I've been manually renaming the old sessionstore.jsonlz4 to sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4 and copying /pasting in the old firefox data file - recovery.jsonlz4 - with all my old tabs but when I open re-open firefox it just restores the most recent session from today.. it's weird because I am using the same jsonlz4 file with all my old tabs that I used on your scrounger and it still doesn't work... maybe because restore last session is selected in options that is overriding the "previous.jsonlz4" file...???

After dropping recovery.jsonlz4 or previous.jsonlz4 into the profile folder, rename it to sessionstore.jsonlz4.

in the "sessionstore-backups" folder I dropped the old recovery.jsonlz4 file and deleted the other files but after re-opening firefox it still restores the most recent version

..and I just renamed it to "sessionstore.jsonlz4" but firefox still re-opens with the most recent version

kryzchn said

in the "sessionstore-backups" folder I dropped the old recovery.jsonlz4 file and deleted the other files but after re-opening firefox it still restores the most recent version

kryzchn said

..and I just renamed it to "sessionstore.jsonlz4" but firefox still re-opens with the most recent version

Okay, Firefox has to be finding those tabs somewhere. Either it's

[profilefolder]\sessionstore.jsonlz4 (1st choice)

or

[profilefolder]\sessionstore-backups\recovery.jsonlz4 (2nd choice)

I tried dropping it into C:\Users\christiaan\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6ps357ur.OldSettings\3qslt1ds.default-1533301440013 AND "sessionstore-backups" folder within that directory and neither worked

is there any way for me to give you access to remotely navigate my PC?

Hazzar!! Success!!.. I deleted the other files from "sessionstore-backups" folder + deleted 2nd sessionstore.jsonlz4 file it had kept creating

are you able to explain why firefox didn't save my tabs, history, bookmarks after the refresh in the first place?.. when it clearly says all that info will be saved

kryzchn said

I tried dropping it into C:\Users\christiaan\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6ps357ur.OldSettings\3qslt1ds.default-1533301440013 AND "sessionstore-backups" folder within that directory and neither worked

Uh-oh, you normally do not have one profile folder inside another. What I mean is:

• 6ps357ur.OldSettings is a profile folder
  • It has a sessionstore-backups subfolder

• 3qslt1ds.default-1533301440013 is a profile folder
  • It has a sessionstore-backups subfolder

When OldSettings is the active profile, Firefox isn't going to read the inner profile folder. It is reading the files and folders all around it.

kryzchn said

are you able to explain why firefox didn't save my tabs, history, bookmarks after the refresh in the first place?.. when it clearly says all that info will be saved

No.

I don't understand.. I thought I dropped a session file into my profile folder.. whatever I did it worked and my tabs are back :)

how do i know if my firefox has been refreshed or not?

kryzchn said

how do i know if my firefox has been refreshed or not?

A youthful radiance? But seriously, a Firefox Refresh removes your extensions, sets the toolbar and new tab page layouts back to default, and restores a number of other default settings. Usually, you would notice.

More info: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

And also, a folder on your desktop named Old Firefox Data.

hi j, thanks for all your help with previous issues.. things were fine but now I've got a new problem.. firefox isn't even opening from my start menu.. Microsoft edge works fine and my laptop seems fine in every other regard.. any clues?

Hi kryzchn, do you recall any software changes between the time Firefox worked normally and now? For example, Firefox update, Windows update, or security software update?

Speaking of security software, could you check the tips in these articles:

• Firefox won't start - find solutions
• Configure firewalls so that Firefox can access the Internet